Harry Potter 1. Cold

_**Hi everyone, thanks for reading!** _

_Couple of A/Ns: this fic is for adult only readership, so if you're not 18 please go no further. __Please feel free to leave a review or some concrit. (Try to keep it kind, though! Patronizing is okay hehehe.) I will answer all reviews by PM. I'm feeling pretty nervous/excited about handling this pairing!_

_Regarding the M rating... this fic may well end up containing violence, offensive language and sexual content, so if you're of a delicate disposition perhaps this is not for you.__...On a more serious note, my last story included a rather harrowing rape scene, but I'm not intending for that to happen in this fic. However, there may be elements of violence with sexual overtones, or (since we're dealing with an amnesiac) complications with consent. Then again, there might not be either - I can't exactly say for sure! However, if there is going to be something of a potentially upsetting nature, I'll give you fair warning at the start of the relevant chapter. _

___For those who followed me through Shadows, just letting you know I won't be uploading a chapter per day, as I found the pressure of that a little too gruelling. But I'll try not to drag it out too long, either! __Special thanks to StoryWriter831 for the continued concrit and for planting the idea of trying out this pairing, and to everyone else who has shouted encouragement. :3 You guys rock._

_Finally, the characters belong to JK Rowling and I make not a penny._

_**Hope you enjoy :)**_

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**BELONGING TO THE FOG**

_You can fall ill with just a memory - Paolo Giordano_

_..._

I was running through a forest, but I had know idea why.

A stinging rain lashed my face and bare arms, plastering my clothes to my body, my hair to my scalp. I was freezing cold and crying, but the tears meant no more to me than an ephemeral warmth on my raw cheeks.

_Where am I? __My _heart was thumping in tempo with my pounding feet. _Where am I?_

_...WHO am I?_

Thin branches welted my skin, I felt twigs snapping and leaves catching on my hair and clothes.

I wondered if I was running towards something or away from it.

Was I being chased? Was there something pursuing me – something terrible, unspeakable?

...Or was I desperately seeking_, searching _for something?

I had no idea how long I had been running for, but my calves were burning, my knees jarring and I was puffing in deep gasps. I had nothing but instinct to guide me, nothing but momentum to keep me from collapsing in a heap.

_Thud – thud – thud – thud_ – my feet struck the ground with rhythmic urgency _– thud – thud – thud – thud_ – my heart struck my ribs with synchronous fear.

The trees began to thin and the light was changing, the lowering gloominess lifting. I must be nearing the edge of the forest. That could only be a good thing.

The rain had abated, but now a thick, encompassing fog was roiling in towards me. I could see the vapor of my breath billowing before me in white puffs, but beyond that it was difficult to make out anything, the trees were now but vague dark smudges in the haze.

My foot suddenly caught a jutting tree-root and I slammed into the muddy forest floor, landing on my right wrist and twisting it painfully. I uttered a cry, but my voice sounded eerily muted, deadened by surrounding fog.

I clambered to my feet, rubbing my wrist with my other hand.

Brushing myself down, I now realized I was wearing an inadequately thin dress, pale yellow, stippled whimsically with daisies. Splattered thickly with mud.

My legs were bare, scraped in places, almost blue with cold. At least I had on trainers. They appeared to be the only item of clothing suited to a wet forest terrain – although an irrelevant, disjointed voice in my head told me they did not go with my dress.

God, it was freezing. If I didn't find shelter before nightfall there was no question I would die.

My right hand twitched, but it wasn't from the pain in my wrist. There was something wrong – it almost felt as if something were … _missing _from it.

I counted my fingers. One, two, three, four, and my thumb made five. I turned it over and over, but it looked like a regular human hand – muddied, scratched and bruised – but a normal hand none-the-less. And yet I couldn't shake the inexplicable feeling it was somehow incomplete.

_Who am I?_

A very watery, very low sun broke through the clouds, illuminating the billows of mist and silhouetting the leafy canopy above. It couldn't be too far off sunset.

I began a hurried, stumbling march, dogged determination now taking place of momentum. I headed in the same direction I had been running before, simply because I _had_ been running that way, never mind that I didn't know why...

Then, in the blink of an eye, both forest and fog ended.

One moment I was trudging through the wooded, thickly veiled terrain, the next I was standing in a wide open moorland, soggily shining in the last thin rays of sun which pierced the great hood of darkening sky above.

A sharp wind raked through my saturated dress and hair, penetrating through my skin, to my very marrow. My teeth began to chatter uncontrollably, and my head ached with the cold – but despite the lack of shelter, I was relieved, immensely relieved to be out of the forest.

Wet scrubby grass and limp tussocks stretched out in all directions. In the distance I could see a copse of tall trees, and rising above the copse was the unmistakable curling tendrils of chimney smoke from a building hidden within.

Chimneys meant hearths, fires, warmth. Oh god, for some warmth.

I stepped out onto the plain and began trudging towards the copse. They wouldn't turn me away, would they? – whoever 'they' were? Surely not. And they could ring the police, get help, find out who I was.

And then tell _me_.

Adding insult to injury, the rain returned, first as a light spatter, but swiftly turning into a drenching downpour. I began to run again, because I was too cold and frightened and sodden to walk.

It was further than I had first thought. On first glimpse I had assumed the copse was smaller and nearer, then I realized it was much bigger and further away. As I ran I counted the swirls of smoke. ...seven, eight... no, nine altogether. It was either a small enclosed village with several dwellings – or one huge house, like those stately mansions in costume dramas. I didn't care which, as long as they let me sit by one of the fires and thaw out.

There was no obvious road leading into the copse, but as I neared I saw there was a towering black wrought-iron gate set deep within the trees, overgrown with creepers. I slowed down, puffing, rubbing at an aching stitch in my side.

Rather daunted, I approached slowly, cautiously. The gates creaked open of their own accord. _There must be a security camera,_ I thought, _the gates must be those fancy electrical ones_. I was surprised I had been let in, the state I must be looking.

Beyond the gate was an enormous house. It looked old – ancient, even – more a forbidding fort than stately home, thickly walled, with narrow windows and heavy buttresses, cloaked in thickly braided layers of dark-leaved ivy.

I shivered. With cold. With trepidation.

A wide flight of stone steps led up to a huge door of iron-braced oak, and I paused at the bottom, steeling my nerves.

Before I could take the first step, I heard a cracking sound behind me, then the crunch of feet on gravel. I jumped, startled, and quickly turned.

A man had appeared – as if from nowhere – and was striding towards me, but he hadn't noticed me, for his eyes were fixed on the silver head of a long black cane which he held in his gloved hands.

He was a tall man, with an imposing bearing, not young – perhaps mid-forty – but wearing his years with an easy grace and power. He was handsome: very, – in fact almost beautiful – his face was full of sharp, arresting angles and planes – but the harmony of his features was marred by an insufferably arrogant hauteur of expression. His hair was blond almost to whiteness, and fell in a silken cascade past his shoulders, contrasting vividly against the sable-black of his attire.

I had the oddest sensation that I had gone back in time: the man was dressed in a compellingly eccentric way, his clothes being not so much old-fashioned as _historical_ – almost medieval – although manifestly immaculate and expensive. Most striking was his long black coat – or robe, rather: high-collared and trimmed deeply with dark fur, which billowed around his elegantly booted ankles as he walked.

By rights he should have been soaking, like me, but weirdly neither his garments nor his hair seemed affected by the pouring rain. Before I had time to puzzle on this aberration the man looked up, stopped dead in his tracks, and in the drizzly light I saw his pale face turn a deathly, waxy white.

"YOU!" The word was a hiss, a rasp, a bark, a snarl.

I recoiled at the violent intensity in his eyes – eyes that should have been light-grey, but were somehow silver and liquid, like mercury – blazing with an unfathomable hatred.

"P-please, I'm lost –" I stammered, backing away. My heel caught on the bottom step of the stone stairs and I lost my balance, tumbling heavily backwards.

Before I could scramble to my feet, the man bolted forwards, thrust me back down and pinned me bodily under him, shoving his cane hard across my throat with both hands, crushing my windpipe.

"You dare show your face here, mudblood?" His voice was hoarse with fury.

I tried to scream, but the cane constricted both voice and air supply, and I started to choke. I flailed uselessly beneath him, clawing at the cane, black and white star-bursts beginning to obscure my vision. Horrible gurgling noises were issuing from my throat.

I wondered if I was about to die. I wondered _why_.

_Please, stop it! I haven't done anything wrong! I don't even know you!_

_STOP!_

_YOU'RE KILLING ME!_

It was almost as if he heard my mind screaming. He suddenly discarded the cane, releasing me of its throttling pressure, then he grabbed a fistful of my sodden hair, wrenching it back, forcing me to look in his eyes. "_Why are you here?_"

I gasped in huge lungfuls of air, coughing violently, my eyes streaming. "I- I'm lost, I got lost a-and I don't know – I d-don't remember –" I was stuttering, almost incoherent with fright.

The man stared down at me, breathing hard. His incomprehensible rage was now alloyed with an expression of increasing incredulity. His other hand roughly gripped my chin, his fingers and thumb digging into each cheek painfully. "Who am I?" he demanded.

I looked confusedly up at him, utterly at a loss. "I have no idea," I shakily replied.

Suddenly he reached towards my throat again, and I emitted a small cry of fear, flinching away. But his arm made a swift, hard, jerking movement, and I felt the chain of a necklace briefly bite into the skin on the back of my neck, then snap off in his fist.

I hadn't even realized I was wearing a necklace.

He thrust it in front of my eyes. "Where did you get this?" he hissed urgently, twisting my hair painfully.

"I don't know!" I cried. I tried to focus on the glinting object. It appeared to be a small silver pendant in the rather-macabre shape of a bird's skull. I literally hadn't known I had it on, or remembered having seen it before.

A series of rapidly-changing emotions told upon the man's pale face. Shocked recognition, astonishment, disbelief... "Is it possible...?" he whispered, through barely-moving lips.

He swiftly pocketed the necklace, then looked sharply back at me. Suddenly he clasped me against him, bringing his mouth so close to my own that for one panicky, disorienting moment I thought he was going to kiss me. But instead he breathed an odd, foreign sounding word.

"_Legilimens._"

I felt the whisper brushing my lips.

His eyes locked onto mine in a gaze at once enigmatic and engulfing: I felt myself falling, falling, drowning in the slate-silver of his irises, the infinite blackness of his pupils. I could feel the slow, strong thud of his heartbeat reverberating through me... the heat and inflexibility of his frame pressed against my shivering, wet body...

...Then a strange sensation in my mind... as if invisible tendrils were reaching inside my head to curl around and sift through my very thoughts...

"What are you doing?" I gasped, but he merely clamped his hand over my mouth and continued holding me closely, his immersing, intrusive stare probing deeper and deeper into my brain...

His body was hard, rigid, every muscle tensed, every tendon strained. For a moment he seemed to hold his breath, then very slowly he exhaled through his nose, almost as if he were deriving some kind of gratification, _satisfaction_ from whatever it was he had been doing to me.

He let me go, propelling himself to stand over me, gazing down at me with a new expression lighting his icy eyes, one I could not begin to fathom, but which was somehow related to ...triumph?

In that moment, his entire manner seemed to change. Gone was the ferocious, violent assailant – disappearing as completely as if he had never existed – and standing in his place was a perfectly cool, perfectly urbane gentleman, albeit one with an intolerably arrogant smile. "Forgive me, my dear. I mistook you for... another young lady." His voice was velvety and suave and edged with razors.

He held out his hand to me, the leather of his glove creaking as his fist slowly unfurled.

I stared up at him in total shock, my heart pounding wildly._ What the hell was going on? _One minute the man was trying to kill me, the next he was – well, god knows _what_ he was doing – and now he just expected me to cheerfully take his hand as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place?

I saw that his cane was tucked under one arm, although I hadn't seen him pick it up. I glared at it mistrustfully, my hand going automatically to my throat. It still throbbed and ached from the recent assault. It was sure to bruise.

He made an impatient beckoning gesture. "Come – I won't have you expiring on my doorstep like a half-drowned cur." Then in a softer tone he murmured, "...You needn't fear me."

_Needn't fear him? He'd just about strangled me!_ _...And had he really been... reading my mind? _

_No. That was impossible... _

I still couldn't bring myself to put my hand into his.

With a soft curse of annoyance he reached down and caught my wrist, roughly pulling me to my feet. His grip was crushing, and I winced. Immediately he dropped my hand, turned away and ascended the stone steps. His heavy robes flicked against my bare arm as he pushed past me, leaving me standing at the bottom in a puddle of bedraggled bewilderment.

I watched him tap his silver-headed cane once against the massive oaken door, and it swung silently open. He half-turned back to me, and even at this high vantage his head was tilted back with an undisguised superciliousness. "Well? Are you coming? Or do you mean to spend the night enjoying a gradual hypothermic demise?"

I grimaced. _Well, _I thought_, if you put it that way..._ I knew, as of course did he, that I had no choice.

Wearily and warily, I clambered up the stone steps, not at all comforted by his inscrutable gaze and curling lip, mulling over the questionable wisdom of entering a strange house with a strange man who had just tried to kill me. My brain was sending out all sorts of warning signals to the rest of my body, making my hands shake, my knees tremble, and my mouth go dry.

As I joined the man at the top I was uncomfortably aware of his height and the powerful breadth of his shoulders and chest. I wouldn't be besting him should he choose to engage me in a wrestling match, that was for sure.

He held out his arm towards the open doorway, directing me to go before him. "My humble abode," he murmured, handing me courteously over the threshold – so courteously as to leave little doubt that he was mocking me.

Many scenarios flashed through my mind as I stepped into the gloomy, low-lit hallway. Was I entering the lair of a predator, a rapist, a psychopath? – A _murderer_?

Well, I decided grimly, I'd rather be murdered _inside_ and at least die warm and dry, than spend another second out in the freezing cold rain.


	2. Heat

_**Thanks** to those who reviewed the first chapter, your words of encouragement mean so much! I reply to all registered reviewers by PM. To any guest reviewers just want to let you know I 'preciate it! ...Hope you like the next chapter... Let me know what you think... :) PS I'm borrowing JK Rowling's characters and not making a cent._

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He showed me into what appeared to be a dining room, furnished in a manner at once grand and oppressive, cluttered with dark-wood furniture and dreary burnished antiques. A huge mahogany table ran the length of the room, its highly polished surface dimly reflecting the lights cast upon it by three low-strung ormolu chandeliers.

An enormous fireplace dominated one wall, and its bright flickering blaze was the only remotely cheery thing in the whole room.

I staggered over to it, kneeling down and stretching out my hands as close as I dared to the tongues of red and gold flame. I closed my eyes and let the warmth envelop me, heedless of the strange man, of his recent bizarre behaviour to me – heedless of anything but the perfect _beauty_ of heat, heat on my skin.

"_What_ is your name, young lady?" The man's soft, drawling voice was much closer than I expected. I gasped with surprise, my eyes flew open. He was standing over me, one arm resting on the marble mantlepiece surround. I hadn't heard him approach. "Who _are_ you?"

_...Who am I? _

For some reason I didn't want to admit to him that I had absolutely no idea. It seemed like such a horribly _vulnerable _thing, to not know my own name. ..._Why_ didn't I know? How was it possible that I could be so lucid, so aware, and yet know nothing, remember nothing, of my own identity? It was like my memory was a butterfly, hovering just out of reach, flitting away whenever I tried to snatch at it...

I felt tears of frustration threatening to well up, but I forcibly swallowed them away. "Um... my name is... Alice," I improvised unconvincingly. "A-Alice Carroll."

I could see in his eyes that he knew I was lying, and yet he looked oddly pleased. "Alice Carroll," he murmured. "That rather rings of a little mu- _girl_ who once fell down a rabbit hole. – Is that what happened to you?"

"I don't know," I replied, confused by the glinting light in his eyes. "I think I must have had an accident and banged my head or something. I – I can't remember... certain things."

"Indeed?" His expression was impassive. "But that _is_ unfortunate. ...Can you recall your address? Or perhaps, the contact details of your parents – your family?"

Reluctantly I shook my head. "No, it's sort-of a blur at the moment."

"What about your _friends_?" He said the word lightly, yet it rang with a sharp, metallic timbre. "Do you remember their names, numbers – anything at all?"

Still not wanting to reply with a negative, I said, "Maybe if you called the police, they could help me..."

He smiled. "I'm sorry to inform you that I don't have a..." – he paused, almost as if casting around for the correct word – "...er...'_telephone_'."

"Not even a mobile?" I asked. He shook his head, the smile still hovering about his mouth.

"...No, I guess there wouldn't be coverage here," I answered myself.

"As you say."

"Well, can you drive me to the nearest phone box?"

He gave a faint sigh, apparently tiring of the conversation. He left his post by the fire and began to pace around the room, the click of his boots echoing on the wooden floor. "I'm afraid that is out of the question, _Alice_. This is a very remote area – in fact some several hours away from civilization. You will simply have to stay here tonight, and I shall see what arrangements may be made for you tomorrow."

I nodded. "Alright. Thank you," I said quietly. I certainly wasn't in a position to argue. I could still feel the crushing pressure of his cane on my throat, and it made me shiver uneasily. He _said_ he'd mistaken me for someone else, but it wasn't exactly comforting to know that he was capable of attempting to strangle _any_ girl in cold blood. What sort of a man _was_ he? Which reminded me –

"Ah... excuse me, sir..." I said tentatively.

"Yes?" He elongated the word in a decidedly patronizing way.

"I... I was wondering what _your_ name was."

He leveled his gaze at me and for a moment seemed to be considering how to reply. Then he made a slight, elegant bow and said, "Lucius."

"Oh." The name seemed to fit him perfectly, it seemed so silvery and powerful and strange. "Well, I just wanted to say thank you for helping me out... um, Lucius." I flushed self-consciously as I tried the name out loud.

Again he smiled, but it was a derisive, hard expression – nearly a sneer – which made me flush even deeper. "Not at all, Miss Carroll," he replied in an insultingly sarcastic manner. "Being of service to you is a pleasure of truly _profound _magnitudes_._"

I gulped and looked away, stung by his scathing tone. I was only trying to be polite! Clearly the man was some kind of misogynist or – or _chauvinist_. ...Well, _he_ could make the conversation from now on, since he obviously found _mine_ so contemptible. I pressed my lips together and stared at the fire.

After a minute of frosty silence on my part, Lucius addressed me again, his tone now blasé, perfunctory. "Are you hungry, Alice? I can have something prepared for you."

"No thanks," I said shortly, although my stomach was actually cramping with hunger pains. I had no idea how long ago my last meal had been.

"Very well, we shall have a drink."

"No, really, I'm fine." _I don't want to be more of a burden than you obviously already regard me,_ I thought sourly.

Ignoring me, Lucius moved over to a rosewood drinks cabinet and took out a cut-crystal decanter containing a liquid of a rich, burnt-umber colour, and two short-stemmed, tulip-shaped glasses. He poured out a generous measure into each glass and conducted them gracefully over to where I still knelt.

"Hors d'Age Bas-Armagnac, 1910," he murmured, proffering one to me. "It is superb."

His expression brooked no refusal, so I accepted the glass from him, taking as much care as possible not to let my fingers brush his, though I didn't quite know why.

"It's wasted on me," I said bluntly. "I don't like spirits." I was surprised at my own adamance. How weird that I could _know _that, without actually _remembering_ anything about myself.

"You will like it," he briefly replied.

He seemed to be waiting for me to drink.

I had an idea that I was supposed to take a small sip and slowly savour the subtleties and layering of flavours, but I wasn't going to make a pretence just because an insufferable snob was looming over me.

I brought the glass to my lips and took a large, clumsy gulp.

_Hopefully he hasn't put a date-rape drug in it,_ I thought, coughing and tearing up a little as the burning liquid hit the back of my throat. I wasn't too sure about the flavour, which seemed awfully strong and spicy and kind-of smokey... but then a lovely warm glow began quickly spreading through every part of my body, warming me up as thoroughly from the inside as the fire did from the outside.

"Oh," I whispered, blissfully, thankfully. "It's... it's like..." I couldn't find the words.

I looked up at Lucius, and for the briefest moment I thought I saw a flash of that same white-burning hatred I had beheld before. But I blinked and it was gone. A mocking smile touched the corners of his mouth: his eyes derided but did not detest.

I must have imagined it.

He lifted his glass towards the lambent flames, swirling it slowly. "Like 'liquid fire and distilled damnation'," he said softly, evidently quoting.

I nodded. That was pretty much it.

I was getting sleepy now – exhaustion was steadily, seductively seeping into my limbs, stifling my brain. I made a rather unsuccessful attempt at muffling a yawn. "Would it be alright if I... I mean, is there a couch or – or something – that I could sleep on tonight?" I grimaced at my own clumsy phrasing.

"There is a guest suite," he replied. "I will take you to it presently."

I felt so... heavy. So tired. Maybe he had drugged me, after all... My body swayed forward slightly, a little too closely to the fire, and I felt a firm hand on my shoulder, drawing me back. "Steady, Miss Carroll. We don't want you falling into the flames, do we? That is a fate reserved only for –." He stopped mid-sentence.

"Witches?" I said drowsily.

He made no reply.

I suddenly realized he was still touching my shoulder, and I felt my body stiffen and a prickly, hot blush overspread my face. At some point he had removed his gloves, and his hand rested, bare skin on skin, between my neck and dress-strap. It was warm, unexpectedly so – all at odds with his icy demeanour... I longed to twist away or shrug him off – not because I found his prolonged touch creepy, which I certainly ought to have done – but precisely because I _didn't_. In fact, rather alarmingly, my body was tingling with all kinds of electric sparks, galvanizing me into a state of exquisitely awkward over-awareness...

- I dropped my glass.

It happened with a slow-motion inevitability: my trembling hand just sort-of lost its hold on the stem of the wine-glass, over-balancing it towards me, spilling the remaining drink all over my dress before tumbling to the ground and smashing on the marble hearth.

I gave a small cry of dismay. Mortified, eyes burning, I bent down and blindly tried to gather the pieces of the broken vessel up, muttering apologies.

"What are you doing, you foolish girl?" I heard Lucius snap, with irritation rather than concern. "You are cutting your fingers." He knelt and grasped my wrists in his hands, preventing me from scrabbling about the shards of broken crystal any longer.

"I'm sorry about the glass," I said, eyes fixed on the floor. "I'll pay for it, of course –"

"Do not speak nonsense," he cut me off sharply. "Show me your hands."

My fists were balled, but he used his thumbs to pry them open. There were some small cuts stinging my left fingers, and a deeper gash on my right hand which was throbbing and streaming blood – although it looked worse than it really was.

Lucius sighed and shook his head, as if thoroughly bored and unsurprised by my clumsiness. He muttered a word through gritted teeth, but I didn't catch it. Clearly, it was no complimentary term.

He brushed away a couple of crystal fragments from my bleeding palm.

I barely noticed the twinge of pain, suddenly overwhelmed by this new, too intimate proximity – him leaning so closely over me, the gentleness of his touch on my hand, the iron inflexibility of his grip encircling my wrist... My heart was thumping, and I was sure he must be able to feel the corresponding flutter beneath his thumb... My senses were inundated, ambushed, by a complexity of hypnotic scents: his aftershave: subtle, expensive, ozonic. The woody spice of the Armangac on his breath. And his skin. It smelled... warm. Was it actually possibly for skin - or _anything_ for that matter - to smell warm?

I bit my lip. What the hell was wrong with me? Here I was: lost, amnesiac, covered in scratches and bruises, stuck with glass and bleeding all over the place – and all I could think was how incredible this man smelled? - A man who had recently tried to throttle me, no less? ...

I must have banged my head _really _badly.

Lucius reached inside his robe and took out a silken handkerchief. He deftly wrapped it around the palm of my right hand and knotted it securely. Then he stood up, still holding my hand tightly, bringing me with him. "Come along, Alice," he said, his voice fairly dripping with contempt. "I will show you to your room."

I wobbled on my feet for a moment, the blood going to my head, making me dizzy. I felt like a silly, chided child.

He escorted me back into the corridor. I now saw that the walls were hung with lavish tapestries and huge gilt-framed paintings, although despite the grandness and splendour, it somehow still managed to feel dingy and very bleak.

We passed a painted portrait of a medieval-looking woman with luminously pale skin and pointy features. She was beautiful, with a fine-boned, glacial loveliness... but her expression was unutterably disdainful.

Obviously an ancestor, then.

The artist had captured her in such a clever, subtle way that it almost felt like her eyes were moving, following us... It was hard to take my gaze off those eyes... they were compelling... mesmerizing...

Suddenly, horribly, the eyes rolled back then forward, the pupils changing to narrow black slits in a veiny yellow surround. The portrait bared its teeth at me - teeth that were pointed like fangs, and oily with blood - and hissed like a snake.

I shrieked, stumbling backwards into Lucius. I heard him softly curse, thrusting me back upright, but I couldn't regain my balance, my head was spinning and my throat clammed up with pure terror. I couldn't breathe, my legs had somehow liquified, and I was falling.

I tried to clutch onto something, anything, but all I felt was air, nothingness and air, and I was tumbling down, down into the darkness.


	3. Snow

_**Thanks** again to all my lovely reviewers and concritters. I can't begin to tell you how much your encouragement means :) Your words are like the chocolate sprinkles on the icing of the cake of writing. __The characters in this story belong to JK Rowling and I don't make a farthing. **Hope you enjoy!**_

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My re-emergence to consciousness was deeply disorienting.

Disturbing, surreal memories surfaced and sifted in my mind, of running through fog, of being half-strangled, of being hissed at by a painting (_really?)_ ...And framing those brief slivers of skewed reality, an infinitely vaulting periphery of... blankness.

Complete blankness.

I lay for some time, going over in minute detail everything I could remember, which seemed to span only a very few hours, perhaps not even so long. Those few recollections revolved slowly – rings within rings, like gimbals of a gyroscope – around a whirring, powerful central axis represented by a pale-haired man who had called himself Lucius.

Who had silver eyes.

Who had tried to kill me.

The more I thought of him, the stranger he seemed, until I wondered if I had merely dreamed him. Perhaps everything was a dream – perhaps I was in the middle of one right now... And yet I was pretty sure I was awake, that this was real._ I think, therefore I am..._

_I am – who?_

_Alice?_

I sat up and looked around. The first impression I had of the room was of emphatic grandeur. The bed was grand, the furniture was grand, the soft-furnishings were heavy and costly, everything impressive and ornate. A guest-suite that was furnished, not to put its inhabitants at ease, but to put them at a disadvantage.

I pushed back the heavy bedding and slid out onto the floor. With a sudden jolt I realized that I was standing in only my underwear. I flushed deeply.

Had _he_ removed my dress? – An angry huff escaped me:_ that pervert!_

But then I remembered the sodden, muddy state of my clothes, and I was forced to admit it would have been the most sensible course of action. …Still, I squirmed at the thought of being seen undressed by the man.

A full-length mirror stood in one corner and I gravitated apprehensively towards it. I had to see my reflection. I had to look myself in my eyes, to discover if I _knew_ myself, even if I didn't _remember_ myself.

I gritted my teeth and stepped in front of the glass.

I hadn't realized I was holding my breath until I let it go in a loud relieved exhalation. _Yes!_ I knew that face. I wasn't a total stranger. _Thank god._

...I wasn't a very pretty sight, however. My hair was a matte mass of tangles, my eyes underscored with heavy shadows – they looked almost bruised against my unnaturally pallid skin. My bottom lip was gashed and there were other welts around my cheekbones and brow. A smear of mud ran the entire length of one cheek, temple to jaw. The rest of me hadn't fared much better - my arms and legs were scratched all over and liberally spattered with dried mud, bearing testament to yesterday's wild run through the forest.

I turned over my hands and inspected them. My right palm was no longer bound, and the gash appeared less raw than I had expected - it wasn't even very sore, which seemed rather surprising.

I lifted my chin, expecting to see a dark bruise across my throat – but strangely it was unmarked. I touched it gingerly, swallowed experimentally – but there was no pain or tenderness. _Surely I hadn't dreamed that I had been choked? _I felt a wave of confusion. Even the few memories I _did_ have seemed to be contradictory, unreliable.

Daylight was filtering through the brocaded curtains, and I padded over, parted them a fraction and peered cautiously out. I was on an upper floor, at least two stories from the ground. There was not much to see – the house was surrounded by a wide stretch of gravel, then bordered by the copse of bristly conifers. It wasn't raining, but the sky was a wintery, iron grey. It looked freezing out there. I shivered, remembering the relentlessness of the cold yesterday, the feeling I would never be warm again, that I was sure to die for lack of warmth.

_Well,_ I thought, _I'm warm, and I'm alive. The cold didn't get me. And the man didn't murder me in my sleep, either._ _I suppose I should be counting my blessings._

An open door near the dresser led through to an en-suite bathroom. I peered inside. _What on earth? The bath – was it full?_ I approached for a closer look. Like everything else, the bath was oversized and ornamental. It appeared to be made from white marble, standing on baroque lion's paws, and by the looks of things the taps were gilded.

And yes, it was full – near brimming, in fact – with steaming, sweet-scented water. Apparently, someone had recently filled it up for me. _Isn't that a bit ….weird?_ I frowned._ Like I can't run my own bath?_

A cloak-stand near the head of the bath bore a thick towel and an oriental-style bathrobe, both of which I supposed had been left for my use. I ran my fingers down the fine, silky fabric of the robe. It looked like the sort of sheer garment that covered much but concealed little... But at least I wouldn't have to skulk around in my underwear any more.

The water did look inviting.

I dipped my fingertips in. It was a little hot. I reached over to the gold taps, but oddly neither one would budge. The faucet handles were molded to the spout, unable to be turned. More weirdness.

_Oh well,_ I thought. _There's no denying I could do with a soak._

I drew the en-suite door closed, wishing it had a lock. Self-consciously, I peeled off my underwear, shielding myself with my hands, not quite able to shake off a deep-seated feeling of vulnerability. I quickly hopped into the bath and slid down into the enveloping depths.

For a while I just lay there, weightless, motionless, not thinking, just letting the water and heat cradle me, breathing deeply in the floral fragrance permeating the rising steam.

But soon the gnawing, frightening _awareness_ of blankness intruded upon me again, and I felt myself tense up. ...When would my memory return? What if it never – but no, I couldn't dwell on that. That was too terrible a thought...

Ducking under the water, I attempted to tease out the knots in my hair. When I came up I saw I had dislodged several leaves and twigs. ..._What a complete mess I must have looked to that man_, I thought, remembering with a cringe how refined and expensive his unusual attire had appeared to be. Not that I _should_ care, unpleasant and sneering as he was. But I did. I just ...did. Perhaps it was his undisguised contempt which _made_ me care.

I scrubbed away the mud on my legs and my arms, flinching every so often when I hit a bruise or scratch. When I was clean I gathered my willpower and hauled myself out. Much as I liked the idea of spending the day immersed in hot, scented water, I had questions that needed answering.

I dried myself off with the towel and then slipped into the bathrobe. It was light as a whisper, silkily cool.

I went back to the mirror and spent some time taming my damp hair with my fingers. _At least it isn't full of twigs anymore,_ I thought. I grimaced at my reflection. Although the robe was undeniably flattering – clinging and draping in all the right places – there was still no disguising my drawn, too-pale face, and the shadows under my eyes: eyes which stared with a somewhat wild fragility, like a startled deer.

_What happened to you_? I wondered of the young woman looking back at me. _Why do you look so... haunted?_

_Who are you?_

"Alice Carroll," I said out loud. "You're Alice Carroll."

But I wasn't so sure. I didn't know why I'd volunteered that name to Lucius, but it didn't quite ring true – I didn't feel the same certainty, the same recognition I had experienced on seeing my reflection.

_Come on, Alice, or whoever the hell you are. It's time to go and find those answers._

I was a little uneasy about leaving the room wrapped only in a thin slip of silk, and for a few minutes I searched for my clothes, or anything more substantial to wear – but the drawers and dressers were bare, and I soon gave up. I went to the door, and stood for a moment, trying to calm the sudden jangling of my nerves. _What are you afraid of?_ I thought. _If that man was going to rape you or lock you in a dungeon, surely he'd have done it by now._

Squaring my shoulders, I twisted the brass handle and pushed the door quietly open. I slipped out into the hallway and wandered down the passage. A flight of wide stone stairs led me down to the first floor, where I had fainted the night before. I stood at the end and made a tentative cough. All was still and half-shrouded in shadow.

"Hello?" I called, annoyed that the voice echoing back at me sounded like it belonged to a frightened child.

As I made my way down the corridor I found myself glaring left and right at the many paintings, almost daring them to come to life. The prevailing theme of the collection appeared to be scornful ladies and imperious men. I noticed that many bore plaques on their frames engraved with names ending in "Malfoy." I wondered if that was Lucius's last name. It seemed probable, if his propensity for sneering was any indication of kinship.

Thankfully, none of these paintings showed the remotest sign of life or movement. ...It seemed ridiculous now. Paintings didn't _move_. ...But soon I was in sight of the portrait that had – had hissed at me, and I automatically slowed down, a numbing dread overtaking me. I edged forwards, feeling almost nauseous with fear – but determined to look, to _see_...

It was completely normal. No bloodied fangs, no vertically-slitted pupils. Just a regular painting of an extremely haughty woman. Beneath it, a small engraved silver legend read, _Sidonia Malfoy née Slytherin_. I leaned closely in, fascinated despite myself. I could see the brush strokes, the texture of the oil paint – the portrait was certainly life-_like_, but not _alive_. ...Had it all been in my head, then?

"Exquisite, is she not?"

I jumped, squeaking with surprise, and quickly turned.

Lucius had materialized from nowhere and was standing a little behind me. He loomed large – his presence immediately confining, dominating. The sharp, angular beauty of his face struck me afresh – it was almost physically shocking; brutal, in a way...

_So he hadn't been just a dream, then._

The man's silver eyes gleamed iridescently in the half-light. "Tragically, she was barren," he added. Then – to himself, it seemed – he murmured, "How differently might things have otherwise transpired..."

"She hissed at me!" I blurted out.

Lucius's mouth curved slightly at the corners. "The portrait?" His voice was a masterclass of disdainful incredulity. "Forgive me, I wonder if I heard you correctly. You say the painting... er... _hissed_ at you?"

I flushed deeply. "Yes, it did, last night," I insisted, although my voice was by no means confident. "You were there – you must have seen it! The painting hissed and then I – I think I fainted."

"Certainly, you did faint," he replied, in such a way that made it clear my doing so had been a rather tiresome inconvenience. "You were suffering from exhaustion, and very likely concussed. It takes no great stretch of imagination to conclude that your mind was playing tricks on you."

Lucius put a hand on my elbow, steering me away from the portrait, but I tensed and resisted. "No! I remember it clearly. Her eyes went like a – a snake's, and she hissed at me!"

He pursed his lips disapprovingly, I suppose at my stubbornness. "...Alice, may I ask if your memory has returned to you this morning – even in part?"

"Not yet," I admitted, somewhat huffishly. "But that has nothing to do with it – I know what I saw!" I turned and stared hard at the painting, willing it to come alive again. "... I was so sure..." I murmured.

I reached out to touch the canvas, but Lucius caught my wrist mid-air. "Enough nonsense, my dear," he said lightly, but with a warning edge to his voice. "Breakfast awaits." He turned and headed down the hallway, pulling me firmly along with him, and I was forced into a stumbling trot to keep up with his long strides.

I definitely did _not_ like being manhandled, and by the time we entered the dining room I had tried and failed twice to squirm out of his vice-like grip.

"_Do_ you mind –" I began crossly, but my protests died on my lips as I found myself being pressed into a seat near one end of the mahogany table, in front of an unbelievably delicious-looking spread of food. Croissants, pastries, preserves, fresh fruit... there was enough to feed several people, though only one place was laid. A silver coffee-pot wafted promisingly.

I suddenly realized just how famished I really was. It was all I could do not to grab a croissant and stuff the whole thing in my mouth.

Lucius moved around to sit at the head of the table, a few feet away from me. "I trust you slept well, Alice?" he said. His tone was one of polite interest, though his eyes expressed anything but.

"Um, yes, thank you," I replied. I sat with my hands lodged between my knees, nearly crying with hunger. "That is – I don't actually remember. ...But thanks again for letting me stay the night." I knew I was laying myself open to more derision, yet I felt I should acknowledge _some_ gratitude.

But Lucius didn't comment. With a dismissive wave of his hand, he leaned elegantly back in his high-backed chair and regarded me impassively. After a few moments spoke. "Well? ...Are you ill? Why don't you eat?"

"I'm not ill," I quickly replied. "It's only... a-aren't you going to have some – ?" I gestured to the food.

"No."

I suppressed a grimace. Not, "_I've already eaten_," or, "_I don't do breakfast_." …Just, "_No_."

What was with the man? He seemed determined to make me feel as awkward and uncomfortable as possible, while lavishing me with all this hospitality. Well, if he wanted to sit there and sneer at me eating, that was up to him. I was too hungry to care.

I reached for a croissant and wolfed it down defiantly, followed by a second. Then I poured a cup of coffee and drained it to the dregs, making no attempt at delicacy, clattering the china noisily.

_There you are, Mr Arrogance Personified_, I thought. _You obviously wanted a display – I hope I didn't disappoint you._ I pushed my plate away and turned to meet his gaze. "Thank you. I feel much better."

"I'm glad to hear it."

I picked up a napkin and wiped my hands nonchalantly, determined not to be flustered, though my cheeks burned. I wondered if the man treated all his guests to such drawling sarcasm, of if I was a lucky exception. In a cool voice I said, "May I ask how long it will take to get to the nearest town from here?"

Lucius tilted his head back, not immediately replying. I didn't like the glint in his eyes as they fixed on mine. It could be mistaken for malice. "Have you the slightest notion as to _where_ we are, Miss Gr – Carroll?" he said at last.

I was uneasy that he'd answered my question with a question.

"I don't know," I replied. "I suppose this could be anywhere in Britain."

He smiled. "I would not..." he enunciated with icy clarity, "depend upon that."

"What?" I stared at him, startled. "What do you mean? Are you saying we're _not_ in Britain? But you're –"

"British, yes," he said drily. "How wonderfully observant you are."

I sprang up from my seat, all pretensions to nonchalance now completely abandoned. "Well, then where the hell are we?!"

Lucius also rose, and took a step towards me - not in an exactly _threatening_ way, but yet still as if to assert - to _remind_ me of - his physical superiority.

I didn't need reminding. I remembered very well his brutality to me on the bottom of the steps yesterday - the way his body had slammed me into the hard stone, his hands painfully wrenching my hair, the cane crushing my throat... Suddenly I wondered if I had been terribly, terribly naïve to put myself wholly in the power of such a man. I crossed my arms defensively. "P-please," I stammered, "I just want to go home."

"And where _is_ that, Alice?" His tone was hard, mocking.

I shrugged helplessly. My lips felt numb. "I... I thought you were going to help me," I said.

He moved away from me, stopping before one of the tall, narrow window panes. When he eventually spoke he did not trouble himself to turn around. "I'm afraid you won't be going anywhere for the time being, my dear," he murmured. "Look out the window."

I did, and my heart sank.

Snow was falling thick and fast.


	4. Curiosity

_Once again, my heartfelt thanks to all those who left reviews. They are my trove of bright treasure. Your thoughts, comments, conjectures, opinions and hypotheses are all welcome :) I hope you like the next instalment! PS the characters in this story belong to JK Rowling and I don't make a dime from the use of them._

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...

Great.

As if it wasn't bad enough to be lost and amnesiac, now I was stuck.

Stuck with a man whose principal personality traits seemed to be – at best, sardonic and saturnine, – at worst, malevolent and violent.

True, he'd given me shelter for the night and provided quite a dazzling spread of food this morning. But he hadn't exactly been gracious about it... in fact he'd been downright rude. And why was he so reticent about revealing our location? – That, I thought, was distinctly ominous.

...There was much to distrust and dislike in his icy gaze and his contemptuous expression – but perhaps even _more _to fear in what was _not _expressed. I was afraid he wore that icy contempt like a mask, concealing something much deeper, much darker, infinitely more dangerous... something which I had glimpsed when our eyes first met across the rain-drenched stretch of gravel yesterday.

And what was worse, I could feel myself being somehow... _drawn _to him. There was something undeniably compelling about him – a magnetism comprising his strangeness, beauty, arrogance... and something else. He seemed to radiate with... god, what was it? ...Power. That was it. He had power. It was both frightening and fascinating – tangible and treacherous.

I didn't trust it. I needed to get out as soon as possible.

Aiming, not very successfully, for a casual tone, I said, "It doesn't look like the kind of snow that lasts."

Lucius didn't even bother replying. It really was a ridiculous comment, given the thick, blanketing flurries completely obscuring the outside world. But I tried once more anyway: "Perhaps this afternoon we could –"

"No," he negated abruptly.

"But I need to – to find out who I am –"

"You are Alice Carroll, remember?"

"Yes, but –"

"Unless, of course, that was a name you simply invented."

"No, no, – but still, I think I should –"

He silenced me by turning and fixing his eyes on mine. They told me in no uncertain terms that it was of no use to continue.

I swallowed drily. I was going to have to try a different approach. "How long does a snowstorm usually last in – wherever we are?"

Lucius made a slight, sarcastic smile. "Why don't you hazard a guess?"

"I could hazard one much more accurately if I knew _where _we were." My voice was becoming petulant now. "But for some reason, _you_ don't want to tell me that."

His jaw twitched in irritation, but he offered no denial.

I peered surreptitiously at the man. He cut a statuesque and rather daunting figure, framed as he was by the window, back-lit by the glare of whiteness beyond. His robe was different to the one I'd seen before – more like a cape – and beneath it he appeared to be wearing a black double-breasted waistcoat and riding breeches, tucked into tall, black hessian boots. I would have taken the ensemble for a costume, except that he wore it with such unconscious grace and ease... He had the look of some Germanic prince of a bygone era – all black-clad elegance, refined ruthlessness.

Yes, he certainly did look ruthless. ...What if he was some kind of psychopathic sex-fiend, with a dungeon full of torture instruments? It didn't seem impossible. It didn't even really seem improbable, which was a bit of a worry, all things considered.

With this rather disturbing thought now uppermost in my mind, I said, "Um, is there – is there anyone else living here at the moment?"

Lucius's lip curled with derision. "You mean, to hear you scream?"

"No, I didn't mean that," I said, blushing hotly, because it was precisely what I _did _mean.

He wasn't, it seemed, prepared to let me get away with it that easily. "Come, now, that was what you were thinking, wasn't it?" He left the window and began to advance slowly towards me. "You're thinking it right now." Each step echoed, hollow and forbidding. "You're wondering if I might be intending to violently... ah, _ravish _you, aren't you?"

I was rooted to the spot with equal parts humiliation and fear. He stopped mere feet away, looming menacingly over me. "Well?" he said, silver eyes taunting and agleam. "Will I do it, do you think? Outrage your honour on the floor, perhaps? Rape you on the table?"

"NO." - The word was vehement and many-faceted. _No, I wasn't thinking that / No, I don't think you will rape me / No, please don't rape me / Just... No._

Lucius raised a hand and gently brushed a stray curl away from my cheek, smiling thornily as I flinched. "I ought to take exception to such denigrating, crude aspersions, Alice." His voice was icy. "Is that a befitting way to repay a man for saving your life?"

"I never – I didn't – said – _say_ anything – about you raping me." It was a clumsy, mortifying, jumbled mess of a sentence. "I was just – just _curious _if you lived alone. I thought you might have a wife, or –"

His expression froze, his whole body suddenly tensing – and I fell silent. He stared down at me, yet somehow _through _me. "No," he said softly. "I have no wife. Not any more."

_Not any more?_ I wondered what that meant. _Are you divorced? Did she die? Did you mur –_

He must have read the half-formed thought in my eyes, for his own blazed with a sudden, white-hot rage, all colour draining from his face. "Insolent mudblood!" he rasped.

He lunged forwards, grabbing my upper arms, and I cried out as he began to shake me, hard, making my teeth rattle, my head spin. "Do you know I have killed men for less than what's written on your face?"

He shook me until my legs began to buckle, then suddenly shoved me away, and I stumbled backwards, yelping as I collided with the table. For a moment I was too giddy to stand, and I lay half-sprawled across it, my head reeling, desperately praying that he wasn't going to use the slab of mahogany in the way he had recently proposed. But though I braced myself for a second onslaught, it didn't come. I recovered my balance and came unsteadily to my feet.

I saw that Lucius had turned aside and seemed to be fighting to compose himself.

"I – I'm sorry," I said. My voice was low, trembling. "I didn't mean to offend you, but you _frightened _me. How am I supposed to know what your intentions are? I d-don't know you."

I wasn't prepared for the naked loathing on his face as he turned back to me. It robbed me of breath, winded me, like a kick to the stomach.

"Your virtue is quite safe from _me_, Miss Carroll, I _assure _you," he snarled. His eyes raked me from head to toe, his expression brimming with distaste... no, with actual disgust.

I bit my lip, my eyes suddenly hot and prickling. Much as I was relieved that he didn't intend to rape me, he didn't have to make it so abundantly clear that he found me repulsive. It was the sort of look someone might give a disease-ridden sewer rat. My stomach churned with insult. _Nobody _deserved to be looked at in such a way. ...I wondered about the word he'd hurled at me twice now – "_mudblood_". Clearly an offensive term, but of what significance? _...It sounds derogatory_, I thought bitterly. _...Even degrading._

Lucius now appeared to have mastered his composure, and he moved back to take his seat at the head of the table. I stood awkwardly before him: abased and resentful, wearing his disgust like a crumpled crown.

For some moments we silently faced one another, currents of hostility rippling in the air between us.

Finally Lucius spoke, and his voice was smooth and controlled, though I could see the tension in the set of his shoulders. "Alice, let us come to an understanding."

"I understand that you frightened me _on purpose_," I said caustically, still smarting. "I understand that you nearly choked me yesterday. I understand that you won't tell me where we are. Can you _blame _me for being afraid of you?"

He did not reply, but I could see in his eyes that he was measuring my words.

I plunged recklessly on, "And _now _I understand that I'm stuck here with you, for god-knows how long."

"Indeed, you are," he said, "– for which, might I add, you should be extremely grateful. You would survive mere hours, were I to turn you out of doors."

He paused, as if politely waiting for me to refute it, but of course I could not. He was right, and we both knew it.

I felt he was relishing my discomfort as he continued. "So. _Fortunately _for you, I am – for the present – prepared to extend to you a measure of protection, which, I need hardly observe, you are in no position to refuse. Are we agreed on that point?"

I nodded grudgingly.

"Then let me make something quite clear. You may expect to be treated as my guest – nothing more or less. I will provide you with necessities. And I will not harm you. You have my word."

_Huh_, I thought, _why do I get the feeling your next sentence will begin with "However"?_

"However," he said – and I felt a small knot of smugness – "there is one overriding stipulation."

"Let me guess," I said sourly. "I have to laugh at all your jokes."

He actually smiled, but it was the kind of smile that danced at the edge of danger. "All I ask is that you curb your curiosity."

I blinked, a little taken aback. "A-about – what?"

"Anything and everything, Miss Carroll. Whatever it is you have the smallest modicum of curiosity _about_. Curb it. Or there will be consequences. Unpleasant ones."

_Hmm... so much for "I will not harm you" ..._

"Do we have an understanding, Alice?"

"But why – " I began, but he cut me off by sharply banging the flat of his hand on the table, making me jump.

"_Do _we have an understanding?"

"But what –"

"I will not ask you a third time, Alice," he overrode me, his eyes glinting warningly. "A 'yes, Lucius' is all I require from you."

I glowered at him. "Yes," I mumbled sullenly.

"Good." His tone was unutterably condescending, and I felt my temper rise.

"And _what _am I supposed to do while I'm here?" I demanded hotly. "Since I'm not allowed to even ask you anything about anything? Can I at least get a – a book to read, or is that considered a _violation _of your _stipulation_?"

Lucius leaned back. "I will show you to the library presently. All other rooms, save this one and your own, are strictly off-limits."

"_Thank you,"_ I said, bestowing on him a fair dose of his own sarcasm.

Lucius raised an eyebrow. "You _should _be thankful, my dear," he replied. In a softer voice he murmured, "I have been more generous than you know."

I felt ...deflated. I had so badly wanted to – at least _start _the process of discovering my identity. I really believed that once the authorities identified me and I was returned to my family, my memory would return, everything would be okay. ...But of all the places to end up, it had to be this strange, remote, backwater fortress – completely cut off from civilization, no internet, no telephone – inhabited by some kind of domineering autocrat with a penchant for violence and possibly a borderline-obsessive grudge against young women._ Well done, Alice._

Tears of frustration welled up. _Don't you dare cry,_ I thought to myself. _Not in front of that man._ But I couldn't help it. Two hot beads escaped and trickled down my cheeks. I quickly turned, dashing them angrily away, but I had already seen the glimmer of amusement in Lucius's eyes.

"Now, now, my dear, there really is no need to snivel." His voice was maddeningly blasé. "Rest assured, if you follow these basic rules, you have nothing to fear."

But I wasn't convinced.

Looking back on the very brief history of our time together, I felt pretty certain that the one thing I did have to fear... was _him_.


	5. Dreams

_**Thanks** for the reviews and PMs, dear Readers! Some of your guesses as to what might be happening have come near(ish) the mark... and some of them are worlds away – but have stirred up ideas for future stories XD ...Keep up the guesswork, Sherlocks, I absolutely love reading your theories! Now, I am aware that this chapter is lacking in action, but hopefully you won't mind. There's plenty more of that sort of thing to come. I just needed to set the scene a little more completely. Or something. _

_PS The characters are JK Rowling's, I just borrow them, and do naughty things to them, then put them back. And I don't make a cent. **Hope you like!**_

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_**...**_

We hadn't got off to a good start, and relations with my "host" did not exactly improve with closer acquaintance.

I joined him in the dining room for meals, or rather _my_ meals, for he never partook. He seemed to take a perverse satisfaction in watching me eat – or to be more precise, in watching me _squirm_ by watching me eat.

Our conversations were curt, combative: I chafed under his lacerating brand of sardonic contempt, and he seemed to take exception to my increasingly rebellious responses. Always, the sparring ended in his favour. He was unflappable, and had a knack for flustering me, so that no matter what point I tried to gain – however rational and sensible it might be – he managed to effortlessly twist my words and deform their meanings, then offer them tauntingly back to me, mangled and defunct.

It didn't help that the strange compelling draw I'd felt for him from the start seemed to intensify with every encounter. His presence was like a powerful magnet, messing up my already-so-damaged internal compass, so not only was I blank and lost, but I was becoming increasingly disoriented too.

I also remained somewhat afraid of him. Though he never used violence against me after the altercation in the dining room, he did not scruple to physically intimidate me. ...A sudden step towards me, a clenched fist resting casually on the table, him stooping too closely over my chair – all these tacitly threatening gestures served to remind me that while in his house, I was to play by his rules.

... And admittedly, there _were_ times when I was tempted to disobey the boundaries he had imposed – for the house seemed riddled with secrets, and I longed to investigate them.

Strange, chilling occurrences kept me always on edge: inanimate objects that seemed to move in my peripheral vision, sibilant whispers that haunted my steps in the long, stone corridors, candles that silently ignited of their own accord, as evening drew near... and once I heard the echoing peal of a woman's voice – laughing or crying, I could not tell which – that made my hair stand on end.

It was like the place was... _haunted._

Of course, some puzzles I was able to reason through: the bath which was full of hot water every morning and evening _could _be on some kind of automatic timer – even though I never saw or heard it running. I presumed the clean robe and towel hanging in the bathroom each day were put there during the night – I _hoped_ by a maid or housekeeper, for I certainly didn't like the thought of _him _coming into my room while I slept... And I didn't really believe Lucius lived completely alone. There must be some kind of staff to keep such a large house in order – to prepare the food, at least – not to mention the fact that my bed was always remade by the time I returned from breakfast each morning.

...The library also proved something of a baffling mystery.

The room itself was large and austere, set up as a place of study rather than leisure, with a large desk in its centre. The walls were lined with hundreds, perhaps thousands of books – floor to ceiling, row on row – all beautifully bound in dark leather... and all entirely blank. Inside and out. No title, no text, no embossing on the spine, just nothing.

Lucius had stood there in the library doorway, that first day, silently observing me flick through page after page of blank vellum, his silver eyes fixed intently, watchfully on my face, a smile deepening the brackets around his mouth. I felt he was toying with me, and I had been sorely tempted to hurl one of the heavy tomes at his smirking face. Finally – perhaps reading the mutiny in my expression – he had directed me to a small, glass-fronted cabinet standing in one dark corner. It contained a very few classics and some obscure scientific textbooks. I grabbed a few at random and stormed up to my room with them, muttering very ungracious thanks as I pushed past him...

I wanted so badly to ask Lucius the meaning of all these strange, unsettling, _frightening_ things... But he had promised consequences to my curiosity – "unpleasant ones" he had said – and having encountered his brutality twice, I had no wish to incite it a third time. Although I no longer feared a sexual attack, I knew that beneath the surface of suave sarcasm the man's temper was unpredictable and volatile – I still believed he was capable of doing me harm.

_He's like the man in that creepy fairy-tale Blue Beard, who warns his wife not to be too curious, _I thought with a shiver. _And she goes and discovers the murdered bodies of all his previous, too-curious wives... _And that thought went a long way to keep my inquisitiveness in check.

...The days had a surreal, dreamlike quality to them – a dark dream, the kind that warps and deforms the more you try to harness and control it.

There were long stretches of numbness and boredom spent alone in "my" room, punctuated by episodes of frustration and despair as I struggled to face the enormous chasm that was my lost memory. I would spend hours lying on the bed, cross-referencing the things I _knew _with the things I must therefore have _experienced, _and that way tried to conjure up some shred of recollection... At other times I would stand before the mirror, just staring and staring at my reflection, trying to find... _me,_ somewhere in my eyes...

But it was hopeless. All I saw were shadows. Shadows in the glass.

The snow showed no sign of abating, and I began to wonder if we were somewhere rather Arctic. It was a marvel the place was so warm – I couldn't see any signs of electric heating, and the fire was lit only in the evenings. Underfloor heating? Some kind of concealed boiler system? It was yet one more question to add to my ever-growing list.

And it was just as well it _was_ so warm indoors, for I was extremely under-dressed for the climate.

The miraculously-appearing bathrobes were all I had to wear, putting me at a perpetual disadvantage – and I was certain Lucius intended it that way. I hated having to appear before him barefoot and in a single layer of flimsy material, when he was always immaculately turned out, right down to emerald cuff-links and starched cravat. It felt... demeaning. But when I complained, he politely advised me that if I objected to the robes I was welcome to go naked. The accompanying sneer made it plain that it would be neither of consequence or pleasure to him if I did so.

"But where are my clothes?" I had demanded. "And my shoes? What happened to them, may I ask?"

He smiled witheringly. "By 'clothes' am I to understand you mean the pitiful rags you arrived in? "

"Yes." - This through gritted teeth.

"Ah." He shrugged. "They have been disposed of."

"Great. _Thanks_. Well, can't you just lend me a jersey or shirt, or – whatever_?_ You must have _something_ I could borrow –"

"That is quite out of the question." And he had given me his favourite warning look.

It did cross my mind that the bathrobes were a kind of security against my leaving. I wouldn't get very far in three foot of snow clad only in a scrap of silk. ...But if that were true – if he _didn't_ want me to leave – then _why_ did he seem to dislike my presence so much? Why did he go out of his way to treat me like a particularly stupid child? Wouldn't he be _glad_ if I up and left?

...I just couldn't make it out.

* * *

...

"What have you been reading, Alice?"

I was eating my dinner, as had become customary, under Lucius's disconcerting, silvery gaze.

He had been watching me for some time, his head tilted slightly back, the usual disdainful curl playing on his top lip. He held a glass of some deep ruby-coloured liquid, swirling it slowly. His hand seemed too large for the delicate crystal vessel – it looked almost precarious in his grasp. But the elegantly relaxed lines of his fingers disproved the possibility of clumsiness – which was more than I could say about _my_ hands, however much smaller and nimbler-looking.

I stared up at him, surprised by his question. "I nearly finished The Tempest," I said, through a mouth full of food.

Lucius looked faintly pained by the fact I was still chewing. He waited pointedly until I had swallowed, then he said, "And? – Are you enjoying it?"

"Yes," I replied. "– I've read it before, or seen the play. I recognized quite a few of the speeches."

"...It has an interesting premise, don't you think?"

I looked at him dubiously. "You mean a bunch of people being shipwrecked on a magical island?"

"No, my dear, that is hardly a premise, is it?" His tone was light and drawling, but his eyes gleamed intently. "I mean a magician – a _wizard –_ using his powers to restore rightful dominion over his would-be usurpers. – Did you not find that interesting?"

"Um...I suppose so," I answered hesitantly.

"You suppose so. What a refreshingly original reply."

My cheeks burned. "_I'm_ sorry," I said acidly. "I forgot to prepare an essay."

He looked amused at my pique. "I don't require an essay. Merely an opinion."

"Oh, you mean I'm actually allowed one?"

Lucius's eyes narrowed a little at my flippant tone. "But of course," he murmured. He set his glass down and then bestowed on me a very mocking smile. "So, tell me, Alice: what _was_ it that interested you – if not the premise? _Enlighten _me."

I picked up a piece of bread and began to shred it, half-angry, half-embarrassed. "I don't know. The way it's written. The words. The story-_telling_, more than the story."

A sharp, enquiring look passed his features_. "_Then_ y_our appreciation is chiefly ...aesthetic? You felt no special interest in its themes – for example, the supernatural elements of the work?" He paused, leaning forward slightly. "– The _m____agic__?"_

There was something cryptic in his voice that made me feel like it was a trick question. His gaze had become a little too piercing, and I felt myself getting flustered. "I suppose so," - I cringed as I realized I'd repeated the words for which he'd already mocked me. "I – I'm not – I hadn't really thought... – I mean, why do you even _care_ what I think?" I said crossly.

Lucius leaned back again. "Oh – I don't." He looked pleased, too pleased.

I frowned. I felt I had somehow conceded a point, without being party to its significance.

_What a strange thing to be smug about_, I thought. _It's just a play._..

* * *

...

...That night I dreamed...

_I lay on the shore of a remote island – alone, cradled by soft, sun-warmed sand. I was nude but unselfconscious – daydreaming, lulled by the whispering waves and sweet breezes caressing my bare skin... _

_The sun began to sink, and as the sky darkened, the island began to shrink around me. It shrank and shrank until it was mere feet in diameter... and I roused from my reverie to discover I was no longer on an island, but lying on a bed, inside the dark, stone bowels of a castle. I sat up, suddenly panicked, recalling that I was supposed to be looking for someone._

_A flight of spiral stairs sprouted out of the ground – I jumped off the bed and began to ascend them._

_...Dull lamps lead me upwards, ever upwards, but as I passed they sputtered and died, and everything behind me was plunged into deepest blackness. I realized the stairs themselves were falling away, and I began to run. I knew if I stopped running I would fall backwards into the nothingness. As I ran I tried to call out to the person I was searching for, but I couldn't remember their name... Instead I cried, "It's me! I'm here!" - but I was answered only by the echo of a woman's eerie laughter..._

_I was getting tired, and my legs couldn't keep up with the encroaching darkness - the faster I tried to run, the slower I became - and suddenly I tumbled back, my arms outstretched as I fell, my mouth shaped into an O of a voiceless scream..._

_...I landed softly on my back. I was in a shadowy, sparsely-lit corridor stretching endlessly in each direction, the walls of which were completely covered in gold-framed portraits of sleeping figures. I lay there, afraid to move lest I awaken the portraits... I feared they would deride my nakedness. I feared they would mock my confusion._

_A person appeared suddenly next to me, but it wasn't whoever I had been searching for._

_"What are you doing?" It was a man's voice, although his face was shrouded by the shadows._

_"I'm looking for someone," I said. My own voice was high-pitched, juvenile, distant._

_"Who? Who are you looking for?"_

_"I can't remember." And I began to cry like a child._

_The man knelt and gathered me up in his arms, pressing me against him. There was a sickening, squeezing sensation – then the corridor changed into my own room, and the man was laying me on the bed. His silky white-blond hair hovered just above me, and I reached up to touch the ends with my fingertips... He pressed something to my temple, and murmured a word... _

…and my dream faded to blackness, like the dimming lights at the end of a play...


	6. Alone

_**Thanks to my dear reviewers,** who took the time to give me some feedback! Whenever I post a chapter I get all nervous, and until someone reviews I'm biting my nails and thinking "Oh god they all hate it. I'm going to have to delete it and start again!" So, yeah, even if you just leave one single word I really appreciate it! __And special thanks this time to zeeksmom whose thoughtful review was nearly as long as the chapter! My ego is most decidedly inflated XD_

_PS the characters are JK Rowlings, I just play dollies with them and don't make a cent._

_Hope everyone enjoys this chapter! (*bites nails* Oh god they're all going to hate it... etc...)_

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...

One morning Lucius did not appear at breakfast.

The food was served, as usual. But the man himself was absent.

I wasn't quite sure how I felt about this. It was a relief to be able to eat without his icy gaze boring down on me. But the atmosphere of the room immediately changed. It felt... too quiet. Eerie. Everything seemed to take on a more tangibly sinister dynamic.

I hadn't realized how reassuring his presence had actually been. Despite his hostility, he was real, he was human, and that went a long way to tranquilize the dread and terror which threatened to overwhelm me, born out of my confusion, my amnesia, my helplessness... and something worse._ – _At times I had begun to question my own sanity. All the strange, uncanny things I kept encountering were taking their toll, and I was beginning to wonder if my hold on reality had been in some way compromised. This frightened me more than any other part of my predicament. Losing my memory was bad enough. But losing my mind? ..._ That_ was a thought too horrible to contemplate.

But at least by having Lucius to interact with – however intermittent and discordant the interactions were – I was able to stave off those fears, to keep them somewhat at bay.

I wondered where he was. Supposedly still in the house, for the weather had not improved, and I couldn't see any tracks in the snow outside, at least, not out the front.

Mentally, I forced a shrug.

Maybe he'd just got tired of witnessing me loudly chomping and slurping my way through mealtimes (I had kept that up as a kind-of protest against him watching me eat.)

But when Lucius didn't appear at lunch or dinner either, I started to feel a little nervous. What if he _had_ left me here, alone in this haunted house? - Or alone with my haunted _mind_?

Darkness had already descended outside, and even though the usual light sources had somehow ignited themselves while I wasn't looking, the shadows seemed longer and darker than usual, the silence infinitely more forbidding.

And very slowly, very gradually, I felt myself begin to panic. _What if he isn't real after all?_ I thought._ What if all this time I've been making him up?_

After dinner I went up to my room and tried to distract myself with a book (Malory's _Le Morte d'Arthur_) and for a while I had myself convinced that I was indifferent, unperturbed. But several pages in I realized that I was picturing all the Knights of the Round Table as tall, silver-eyed, blond-haired men in long black robes.

Sighing, I snapped the book shut. Clearly, I wasn't going to be able to relax until I had seen the man, until I had made certain that I wasn't all alone in this place for the night.

I wandered over to the door, hesitating for a moment. Did this count as curiosity? Was it just a convenient excuse for me to nosey about?

_Yes, and yes, _I thought.

But they were secondary reasons. My prime motive was not to find _out_ about him, but to _find_ him.

I opened the door and headed out into the corridor.

Half-way along the stone passageway I realized I was tiptoeing, and I tried to make my steps deliberately louder, not wanting to be caught sneaking – though in bare feet I could hardly help it. "Lucius?" I called. "Are you there?" My heart was beating erratically, but whether it was for the sake of encountering the master of the house, or in fear of encountering something sinister, I was not quite sure.

Perhaps it was one and the same thing.

I reached the stair landing. _Up or down? _I wondered. I hadn't been upstairs...

_Is that where his bedroom is?_

An unbidden picture of the man flashed through my mind – sans his immaculate attire, blond hair spilling down over wide, muscular shoulders and a pale, solid chest... long, bare limbs, sinewy and powerful and lithe...

I blushed, annoyed at myself. It was something I kept catching myself out on. I seemed to be _dwelling_ on him far too often – more with each passing day – replaying our conversations over and over in my head, changing their outcomes in my favour – imagining others which hadn't taken place, where I was the cool-headed victor of our debates, and he forced to concede to me his grudging respect... his silver eyes illuminating with admiration... and something more...

_Ugh._ I knew it was both futile and foolish to wish him to reciprocate the attraction I couldn't seem to help feeling for him. I hated to even admit to myself that I _was_ attracted to him, after the way he'd treated me. He didn't _deserve_ to be considered attractive, for he never showed even the slightest chink in his armour of arrogant contempt for me. How was it even _possible_ I could feel something for him?

Frowning, I deliberately pushed the seductive image firmly from my mind. I had enough trouble as it was with warped realities, without adding confusing fantasies into mix. For all I knew the man was somewhere in the house digging up floorboards in preparation for stowing the severed remains of my lifeless body.

Despite this not-very-comforting thought, I squared my shoulders and decided to ascend. Apparently, my curiosity was more powerful than my sense of self-preservation...

I took the stairs at a trot, afraid that I'd bottle out if I didn't force some momentum into my legs.

"Lucius, are you there?"

I had the sudden absurd idea that he and I were playing Hide-And-Seek, and I stifled a slightly-hysterical impulse to call out, "Coming, ready or not!" Instead I let out a rather silly, extremely nervous giggle.

Then, just as I was nearing the landing, every one of the wall-mounted candles in the stairwell suddenly snuffed out. I gasped and swung around. Darkness yawned horribly behind me._ Like in my dream,_ I thought. I gritted my teeth and turned back._ Onwards and upwards it is, then._

The third-floor corridor looked similar to those below, except gloomier, grimmer – or was that just in my head?

There were several doors along the passageway, but I didn't feel at all tempted to knock as I made my way down its length. "Lucius?" I tentatively called again.

As I walked (or crept, really – my initial energy having somewhat extinguished with the candles) I became aware of a dull, percussive sound, coming from behind the last door, at the far end of the passage.

It was rhythmic, kind-of scratchy – and very, very creepy.

_Crit-crit... crit-crit... crit-crit..._

I could feel my hair bristling, and a clammy coldness had started in the pit of my stomach and was spreading out over my entire body. My hands felt numb and heavy, and my legs no longer seemed as reliable as they had before. In fact, with each step taking me nearer, they appeared to be jellifying a little more. _This is just plain silly,_ I thought. _I don't want to investigate that sound. Really, I should turn right around and head back down the stairs. I can make it in the darkness if I cling to the bannister._

...But somehow, my feet were dragging me inexorably onwards...

_Crit-crit... crit-crit... crit-crit..._

"Lucius!" I tried to call again, but it came out as little more than a quavering squeak.

I was very near the end of the corridor now, turning to face the door itself.

_There's sure to be a perfectly reasonable, mundane explanation... _

I took a step closer...

_Crit-crit... crit-crit... crit-crit..._

I reached out a hand towards the door-knob...

Suddenly – – a bone-chilling wail from inside – – the door was shaking and banging – – the doorknob furiously twisting and juddering, as if someone was trying to force its lock – – I was reeling away, terrified – and –

"MUDBLOOD!"

A searing bolt of electricity shot through my body and I literally screamed, staggering back.

Lucius was striding down the corridor towards me, black cloak billowing, murder in his eyes. His hand was clutching a slim baton of dark wood, which he wielded almost like a weapon.

"Lucius! There you are!" I cried unsteadily, speedily reversing into the passageway's extremity. _Damn_, I thought, _why couldn't there be stairs at both ends?_

I was shaking badly, from the electric shock, from the fright of the quaking door – which had abruptly stopped – and from a new, more immediate threat, in the shape of the furious man backing me into the corner. He didn't stop his long, wrathful strides until I was squashed hard up between the cold stone and his solid body – which suddenly didn't seem _quite_ so attractive after all, now it was being used as a kind-of battering ram against me.

He jabbed the wooden baton up under my chin with one hand, grasping a fistful of my hair with the other. "What did I say about prying?"

I winced. "I wasn't pry–"

A hard shove served to silence me. "_What_ did I say about prying?" he snarlingly repeated.

"You s-said there would be c-consequences," I stuttered, gasping a little at his crushing weight. "But I wasn't pry – OW!" I didn't know if the roots of one's hair _could_ be stretched, but it certainly felt like that was what was happening. The burning twinge made my eyes water.

Suddenly he released my hair and raised his hand to my face. I flinched, and braced myself for a hit.

But instead he clamped his hand over my eyes, and there was the most extraordinarily awful feeling of – I don't know – pressure, _suction _– as if I were being twisted and dragged through an old-fashioned wringer. I felt myself retching. "Stop – stop – stop it!" I cried – but it had already stopped, and Lucius had removed his hand.

I would have fallen, but he held me up in a strange, close, fierce embrace until I found my balance.

I stared around, speechless. We were smack-bang in the middle of the dining room. _How the hell did we get here? What just happened? Am I really going mad?_

But I wasn't able to dwell for long on my probable insanity, for Lucius had decided to grab my hair again and give it a hard wrench.

"What were you doing upstairs?"

"I – I was looking for you," I stammered between puffs of pain. Both my hands were frantically trying to disengage his fingers from my locks, but to no avail. He was just so much stronger than me, and – perhaps more importantly – so much angrier.

His eyes narrowed. "You appear to have found me," he said.

"I can _see_ that –"

– _WRENCH_ –

I yelped. "For god's sake do you have to –"

– _WRENCH_ –

"Ah – ow – _shit_! Please, Lucius, stop! – Let me go, damn you!"

He did, and rather roughly at that, pushing me down into the nearest chair and standing over me aggressively. The baton was clenched in one fist, and I eyed it apprehensively. I didn't know what it was for, but I imagined it could inflict pain if applied with that intention. A quote I must have read somewhere jumped into my head, that in historical days,_ "a man may beat a woman with a stick or rod as thick as his thumb and as long as his forearm."_ I truly hoped that wasn't going to be the case here.

Lucius seemed to have guessed my train of thoughts, for a smile hinted at the corners of his mouth, and he began to softly rap the wooden implement against the palm of his other hand. "Consequences, consequences," he murmured softly, and I found myself flushing at his tone, at the gleam in his icy eyes.

I glared up at him resentfully, annoyed at his manhandling and intimidation, when all I had been trying to do was to find him. Well, sort of.

"It wasn't _my_ fault you decided to abandon me without warning," I said crossly. "I was _worried_."

"Were you, my dear." It was not really a question. "Your concern is very touching."

"I wasn't worried for _you_," I retorted tartly. "I was worried for _me_. I don't _feel_ like I'm – I'm _safe_ in this place."

_Tap – tap – tap_ – went the baton. "Nor should you," he replied. "Since you have broken the rules guaranteeing it."

"I _told_ you – I was just looking for you. I wasn't breaking your precious rules. Or... not purposefully."

"Indeed." _Tap – tap – tap._ He regarded me with an impassive, almost bored, expression, as if he were weighing up whether I was _worthy_ of the effort of punishment. I was put in the very curious position of hoping I wasn't, yet somehow half-wishing I was. I hated his contemptuous indifference almost as much as I feared his unpredictable violence.

"Anyway, where _were_ you today?" I said with a scowl.

He looked amused and faintly incredulous at my question. His elegantly raised eyebrow told me he had no intention of answering it. "Tell me, Alice... what _exactly_ do you suppose is behind the door you were on the brink of most unwisely entering?"

I shivered, not really wanting to think about it. "How can I guess that?" I said.

"Please, indulge me."

"I don't know..." Then, snippily, "Another happy _guest?"_

I knew I was risking his ire. For a moment his baton stopped its tapping, and I gulped a little at his expression. But then, unexpectedly, he tilted his head back and softly laughed.

I was relieved, although I tried to assume an air of nonchalance. This all but disappeared as he stooped over me, lightly placing the baton to my lips. It wasn't an overtly threatening gesture. But it was very unsettling. "If I catch you prying again," he murmured, an almost tender note to his voice, "the consequences won't just be visible. They will be indelible." And he gave me a very unpleasant sneer. "_My dear_."


	7. Falling

_**Hi folks! I hope you've been enjoying the story so far :D **As always, thanks to my cherished reviewers, your support means the world and keeps me going. Now, I would like to address a complaint, made by more than one of you... Namely, that my chapters are too short. I'm very sorry to say I'm not a fast writer, and if I can hit two thousand words per weekly chapter I consider myself very industrious indeed. If I hit three thousand, I reward myself with champagne. Well, this week I've managed to edge closer to four, so that means I get champagne AND chocolate. **HOPE YOU LIKE!** (If you do: please review! I'll love you forever and ever! ...I'm serious, I actually will.) __PS The characters are JK Rowling's (praise her name and strew garlands before her) and I make no money from trifling with them awhile._

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___..._

_I must have blacked out._

I was sitting on my bed, arms wrapped around my drawn-up knees, trying to make some kind of sense of what had happened up there on the third floor.

No, that wasn't quite right. I wasn't trying to make _sense_ of it, I was just trying to siphon out some of the absolute _impossibility_ of what I had experienced.

_Yes,_ I thought, _that's what happened. I must have fainted in the corridor. Lucius carried me down to the dining room – then I came to – and it seemed like we'd been instantly transported._

The details didn't exactly bear close inspection, but I wasn't inclined to be fussy. Any explanation, however tenuous, was good enough for me in my present state of confusion. And it _was_ plausible, wasn't it? I'd fainted before – on the first night – so it was reasonable to expect I might do so again. After all, I'd clearly suffered some trauma to the brain – being amnesiac and all.

I didn't mind fancying myself to be experiencing the symptoms of a little temporary brain-damage. Because it was either that, or I had gone completely loopy.

_What the hell was behind that door?_ I clenched my right hand, remembering the painful electric shock that must've come from the handle. _Was it really a woman? _Goosebumps prickled over my entire body as the eerie wailing replayed in my memory. It had _seemed_ to be in a woman's register of voice – but then again, it had sounded so... _inhuman,_ that it could have been just about anything – even the howl of an animal. It was a sound I never wanted to hear again. ...And what about the violence of the rattling door? – The way the wood had buckled and nearly splintered against its locks... could such fearsome strength truly belong to a woman?

I couldn't stop shivering, although I was not cold. I reached for a pillow and hugged it against me, trying to manufacture some feeling of comfort.

Over the duration of my stay, I'd half-joked with myself that I'd managed to stumble upon the house of some psychopathic dungeon-master. Well, the truth was, I wasn't finding the joke very funny anymore – if I ever had. There was no denying something – some_body_ – was locked up on the third floor. Had that someone started out like me – a hapless, lost stranger? Had that someone sought safety and shelter, and found only torment and terror? … Had that someone been manipulated or goaded, tricked or brutalized into simply... going mad?

_Is that to be my fate?_ I wondered. _To become a prisoner? Or a lunatic?..._ And then a sudden, unbidden thought: _...A ghost?_

I shook my head vehemently. I wasn't going to indulge ridiculous, supernatural theories to explain away every weird or frightening occurrence, however tempting it was to do so. I wasn't a child, to fill dark spaces with monsters and goblins. Just because I didn't _understand_ something, didn't mean it wasn't _explicable_... Did it?

My thoughts drifted, as they did all too often, to the man who was – by default, really – slowly and surely becoming the centre of my universe.

Who _was_ he? I had learned almost nothing about him since I first arrived – and yet he was in the extraordinarily powerful position of being the only person I currently _knew_. Was that what drew me to him? Was that why he was so damned... _magnetic_? Was that why – when he continued to insult, intimidate and even _attack_ me – I still found him so compelling?

...He was the last thing I thought about when I dropped off to sleep; the first when I awoke... _Why?_

Perhaps it was simply his abrasive, inescapable beauty. ...But I didn't really believe so. Beauty did have it's own undeniable power, but this – _this_ ran deeper. Had the man worn a mask the whole time, I was sure I would still be lying here, clutching a pillow, thinking about him. Thinking about his hypnotic eyes... gleaming like quicksilver...

I flopped sideways onto the bed, curling around the pillow in the foetal position.

I wondered about the men in my life – in my _real_ life. What were they like? My dad, my relatives, my friends – maybe I had a boyfriend? ...I was fairly sure they would be _nothing_ like Lucius. No rational female (and I was sure I _was_ usually rational, no matter if I was temporarily... unhinged) would voluntarily _choose_ to put herself at the mercy of such an overbearing, arrogant despot. ...But I _wasn't_ here voluntarily, and I _didn't_ have a choice. And so I just kept on watching myself – with a kind of horrified fascination – being drawn down and down, deeper and deeper, into an infatuation with a dangerous, secretive man... a man who wielded his charm, purposefully and expertly, like a poison-dipped sword.

_Why are you letting this happen, Alice? You know it's an uneven fight. He has every advantage. He has all the power. He doesn't even like you. In fact, he barely tolerates you. No good can possibly come of this._

An image of him shimmered vividly in my mind.

His snowy-blond hair, with never-so-much as a single strand out of place. ...Was it _ever_ tousled, from sleep, or from exertion, or – ? I flushed. _No Alice_, I scolded myself. _Let's just say it's never tousled, and leave it at that._

I thought about his eyes again. Strikingly fringed with jetty lashes and framed by dark brows, they seemed by contrast, so light and cold – even cruel. ...And yet their distinctive shape – tilting very slightly upwards at the outer corners – gave him a perpetual look of tenderness, even humour. I had noticed the same thing about his mouth. The corners flicked up disconcertingly, so even his harshest sneers seemed somehow softened, sweetened. _Is that why he's so attractive?_ I wondered._ Because of a mere quirk of feature?_

He was certainly a man of contrasts, both in looks and personality. He was urbane and suave – yet he could be unkind, even vicious. Elegant and civilized, yet violent and savage. His voice was silky, purring, but his words sank like fangs. And he was so achingly beautiful – yet entirely masculine – _too_ masculine: he was physically dominating to the point of brutishness. Every alarm bell rang in my head, telling me to ward him off, telling me not to be a conscious fool, not to be a willing victim.

_Do you really want to fall for a man like that? _I asked myself._ - No, no, no, no, no. You shouldn't. You mustn't._

Trouble was, I didn't know how to stop myself.

* * *

...

If Lucius believed his threats to have cured me of my curiosity, he was very much mistaken. If anything, it was stronger than ever.

I just wanted to know... _things_. Anything. Everything. Whether subconsciously I was longing to somehow find myself –or if I was just a genuinely inquisitive (read: nosy) person, I could not be sure. All I _knew_ was I wanted to _know._

True, I didn't exactly feel like rushing back up to the third floor with an axe to chop down the door of the wailing lady. But too often I found myself wondering when the next opportunity to explore (read: pry) might present itself.

And although I was afraid of Lucius, with each passing day I became less so. Not because _he_ was changing, but because _I_ was. ...It was almost as if I felt immune from his wrath by my own feelings for him. As if that somehow counted. It was a dangerous fiction to cling to... but a pleasant one.

None-the-less, for some days after the events on the third floor, I had done my best to "behave myself" for him. I made a real attempt to be civil, polite, tractable, even deferential. I was like a self-repressing Victorian child: only speaking when spoken to, always seen and never heard. I even toned down the loud chewing.

But not once – not even _once_ – did he meet me half way.

He treated me exactly the same as he had from the start, like some contemptible, irrelevant inconvenience. ...And it didn't take me very long to resent it. Soon enough we were back to our old combative, antagonistic exchanges– except _now_ I was taking his insults to heart. I wanted so much for him to show just the smallest sign that he was softening to me. But the man was made of ice.

And when the only person you know despises you, the world is a terribly, terribly lonely place.

* * *

…

"Will this snow never end?" I pushed my food glumly about my plate with a silver fork. As always, it looked delectable, but today I had no appetite. I was frustrated and bored. "I'm so sick of being cooped up like this. I feel like I'm shut in a zoo. No, in a cage. In one of those really small pet-shop cages." I yawned elaborately. "I am actually _so_ bored I'm thinking about playing skittles with those antique vases down the hallway. I don't know what I'd use as a bowling ball, though..." I looked up at Lucius, encountering one of his usual sneers, which I blithely ignored. "Any ideas?"

The expression in his voice mirrored the one on his face. "I'm sorry, were you addressing me? – I had presumed, or rather hoped, those incoherent ramblings were for yourself alone."

"I guess that knight in the stairwell _could_ go without his head," I continued, pretending not to hear him. "It's not exactly the right shape, and it will _definitely_ be noisy... But you wouldn't mind, would you?"

He did not even blink. "Why don't you try it and see?" It was not so much an invitation as a threat. Usually it would have been enough to subdue me – but today I felt irrepressible... even rebellious.

"Lucius, can I ask you something?"

"..._If_ you must."

"Um, promise not to get angry?"

He didn't need to say "No." It was written plainly on his face.

"The books in your library. They're written in invisible ink, aren't they? - I'm not prying." I quickly added. "I'm just telling you what I think."

His cool eyes betrayed nothing. "And?"

"_And_ nothing. _And_ I'm asking you to confirm my theory."

His head tilted back and his lips compressed in a tight, slight smile. "Such a prodigious wealth of insight you have, my dear."

"So I'm right?"

"...No."

"So I'm wrong?"

His gaze flicked over my face, lingering momentarily on my mouth before fastening back on my eyes. Again, that extrinsic, tender look made my stomach flip. "You are... consistently unwise."

I shrugged. I had come this far without provoking his anger, and it was making me a little reckless. "Oh, just tell me, Lucius. I promise not to be shocked."

"You should not promise what you may not perform."

"Alright then – shock me."

This time his smile had teeth. "I'm not in the habit of indulging the petty caprices of foolish young girls, Alice. Suffice it to say, _"He who plucks out this great treasure, is right-wise born worthy_"."

I hid a grimace. I could recognize an insult when I met one, whether or not it was masqueraded as a flowery quote. _So, I'm not worthy_, I thought. _And who decided that, I wonder? Let me guess. Mr Big-Head Bigot Sir High Lord Lucius Himself._

I tried to look like I didn't care. But I cared alright. I cared much too much.

I threw my fork down and scraped my chair back noisily, secretly relishing the clenching of masculine jaw muscles it provoked in my host. "I'm not hungry," I said, standing up and stretching.

"The meal is not yet over, Alice."

"Oh, really?" I said sarcastically. "Well, _I've_ finished – but _you_ can keep on staring at my empty chair if you like."

His eyes narrowed warningly.

"What?" I said. "It'll be a nice change for you. Give your eyeballs a rest."

"Sit down and finish your meal, Alice." His tone was patronizing and parental, and it goaded me to immature impudence.

"Huh. I didn't realize you were my _father_," I said flippantly – and instantly regretted it.

Lucius jumped as if scalded, and his face went perfectly ashen. His pupils contracted to black points and his irises gleamed cold and wide, like a snake's. He rose to his feet, staring. "_WHAT_?" The word was barely a whisper, but the rage behind it was... deafening.

My heart had started pounding fearfully. _Good god,_ I thought, _he's really going to murder me._ I wanted desperately to run, but I was frozen stock-still by his terrifying, petrifying gaze.

The muscles in his face were actually contorting with fury and loathing and – and _pain_?

"Never. Never. _Never_ say that word. Again."

He half-turned away and brought his hand over his eyes, spanning temple to temple, like someone with a migraine. The jewels on his rings sparkled in the light, and I realized his fingers were trembling. "Get out," he hissed. "Get out of my sight before I kill you with my bare hands, _you disgusting little mudblood bitch_."

I turned and fled.

* * *

…

I cried bitterly for the rest of the afternoon. Then I skipped dinner to cry bitterly for the rest of the evening.

And then I packed.

Which is to say, I pulled the thick quilt off my bed, doubled it over, wrapped it around me and used one of the curtain cords to tie it in place. I looked like a giant marshmallow, and I could barely move, but I didn't care.

I had to get out. I couldn't – I couldn't stay here any more.

It was becoming too much like torture.

_Why does he hate me?_ I thought. _I don't hate him. He's all I know._

_If I don't get out, I'll cease to exist. I'll burn up in his brightness. I'll drown in his shadow._

_I have to find out who I am, before I don't care anymore._

I waited, huddled on my bed, occasionally hiccuping with remnant sobs, until I was sure it was after midnight. Then I quietly slipped out of the room and padded lightly along the corridor and down the stairs. All was still and quiet, the only movement coming from the candles, flickering in some slight draught.

As I approached the door I began to have serious misgivings. _You haven't thought this through, Alice_, I chided myself. _You've got bare feet. It's snowing. It's freezing. It's dark. God only knows what is out there._

But I couldn't stop now. If I did, it would be too late.

I was close enough to reach out and touch the huge brass door-handle. Slowly, oh-so-slowly, I curled my fingers around the metal ring and twisted it to the left. I felt the catch release, and the weight of the door shifted onto my arm. I didn't need to pull – it swung slowly, silently open.

Of course, he was standing there.

His arms were braced on either side of the door-frame. His eyes were unreadable.

We didn't speak. He merely stepped forward, across the threshold, and I stepped backwards into the hall.

One. Two. Three more steps: he forward, me back. The door swung shut with an echoing, ominous click.

He made a slight movement and both quilt and curtain-rope fell onto the floor, around my ankles.

The absurdity of the situation was suddenly too much, and I felt a hysterical urge to burst out laughing. "Hello, Lucius," I said, and it came out as a half-choked giggle.

Lucius did not look amused – but neither did he look angry. Just... watchful. "Alice, may I request – or do I ask too much – that you give me some account as to what _exactly_ you think you are doing?"

I was grinning so much my cheekbones hurt. I couldn't stop it. "I was running away," I said with a loud snort.

"Running away from – what, pray?"

"Oh, from you. Definitely from you," I tried to suppress a chortle, but it spluttered out anyway.

"I see."

And then I was totally out of control, just laughing and laughing and laughing until the tears ran down my cheeks. Kkkkkkkkk – ha ha ha - ha ha haaaaaaa. I kept whooping and gasping as Lucius silently took me by the arm and pulled me along with him, back down the hall and up the stairs. He opened the door of my bedroom and pushed me inside, following behind. A fresh burst of hilarity ensued as I realized the quilt was back on the bed and the cord tied around the curtain, as if they had never left.

I didn't really feel fazed by Lucius's stare as I wheezed and panted. I was so used to it by now.

Eventually the hysteria had run its course, and I stood trembling and hollow before him. _Sniffle. Ow, my sides._ "I don't want to stay here any more," I said miserably, dashing away the tears from my eyes. "I'm leaving tomorrow."

I peered up at Lucius. A play of deep shadows emphasized his sharp features, and he looked about as merciful as an avenging angel. "No, Alice," he murmured. "I'm afraid I can't allow that."

My face felt numb. A horrible, suffocating realization was descending upon me."You – you never intended to let me go, did you." I said the words slowly, tasting the bitter truth of them on my tongue. "I'm not your guest. I'm your _prisoner_."

I read the confirmation in the hardness of his eyes, in the set lines of his expression. He didn't speak, merely made a slight bow of assent.

My mind was a whirlwind of spinning, disjointed puzzle pieces. But some of them were snapping together, as if drawn into place by some magnetic force.

"You know who I am, don't you!" I cried. "You've _always_ known!" My voice was shrill and getting shriller. "You've been watching me d-drown in this – this _blankness_, this nothingness, and you've just sat back and – and _enjoyed_ it, haven't you? _Haven't you_?"

To my disbelief and rage, Lucius actually chuckled.

I heard myself utter a cry of anguished fury and before I knew what I was doing I was leaping towards him, my hands curled into claws, intending to rake them down his perfect, beautiful, insufferable face.

It didn't happen.

In my blind anger I didn't see the hit, but none-the-less I was sent flying backwards, a full several feet, colliding with the wall and dropping to the ground.

I lay there, winded, a stabbing pain in my back, unable to move or even breathe as Lucius strode over, his face twisting with venomous ire.

He hauled me up and shoved me against the wall with such force that my head snapped back and I bit my tongue. The spurting metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, but I was still too breathless to cry out. I didn't struggle, because, simply, I couldn't. His body was plastered the length of mine, and if his superior strength had not already precluded resistance, his sheer height and weight would have easily done so.

One of his hands was around my throat, the other was pressing the wooden baton to my temple. "Care to try that again, mudblood?" he snarled, a furious incandescence lighting his eyes.

_That word again._ "Don't call me that!" I cried – at least, I tried to – but my bitten tongue was swollen now, and I only managed an incoherent mumble. I felt a warm flow of blood spill down my chin and onto the hand clutching my neck. Even at such close proximity I could see the stream of bright scarlet vividly striping his strong, pale wrist.

I heard a sharp intake of breath, and immediately, reflexively, Lucius pulled his hand away and wiped it down the front of my robe. His palm, hot and hard, seared through the sheer fabric of my robe and connected with the curve of my breast, brushing to instant tautness the sensitive tip – and I gasped aloud.

His gesture had been automatic – even accidental – and yet suddenly, palpably, everything changed.

It was as if my gasp had some galvanizing effect on him – on both of us – and we stood, locked together in a terrible parody of a passionate embrace... then I became aware of an unmistakable rigidity pressing into my abdomen...

Our eyes met, and I don't know what he read in mine, but his were plainly expressing shock, disbelief...

With a hiss of discomposure, he quickly stepped back, releasing me, and I fell in an ungainly heap at his feet.

He stood over me for some moments, staring down with a fierce, riveted look in his eyes, watching me attempt to stem the flow of blood with my sleeve. Tears were running freely down my face and I knew I was a complete mess of smeared and dribbling fluids.

Then abruptly, he turned on his heels and strode out the door, slamming it behind him. I heard the echo of his booted footsteps hurrying away down the hall.

I lay curled up, unmoving, trembling with shock and pain... and something else. ...His touch had electrified me – not in the brutality of his violence, but in the startling, unforeseen force of his sudden desire... and there was no denying my own response to him. A blaze of euphoria was coursing through me: my whole body thrummed and tingled.

And through the messy jumbled confusion of my mind, I kept thinking, _he knows who I am._

And suddenly, unexpectedly, I was _relieved_.

Relieved that someone knew, anyone.

Even him.

Now I just had to get him to let me in on the secret.


	8. Questions

_**Thanks to all **__peeps who left comments! I can't believe some of the lovely things you've said about my writing. Makes me quite teary. You don't know how much I love you. Anyway, you can also thank yourselves for contributing to this story, because your reviews feed the muse :D _

___Now where were we? Ah yes, you wanted some answers. Hehehe, well, I'm afraid this chapter is called Questions, so... sorry about that! Well, please leave some feedback. And most importantly ...____**ENJOY! **_

___PS The characters belong to JK Rowling and I just borrow them for a bit of harmless, escapist, non-money-making fun._

* * *

_..._

All night I lay awake, unable to sleep for the dizzying confusion in my head, the relentless thudding of my heart.

I couldn't quite believe what had happened, and was, as usual, inclined to doubt everything – except for the all-too-real pain in my back ribs and the throbbing of my swollen, bitten tongue. I stared into the darkness, trying to somehow tether and subdue my wildly careering thoughts.

_He knows who I am,_ I thought. _At least, I think he does. Or is he just toying with me?_ Just like everything else, I couldn't be sure.

Fervently I hoped that he _did _know. For some reason I felt that if he were to reveal the truth of my identity, my memory would come flooding back, everything would make stark, sudden sense... But then, what if he _didn't_ tell me, or he didn't know? Would I be forced to remain in this infernal darkness forever?

_He must know who I am, _I decided. It was the only rational explanation as to why he would prevent me from leaving. - Unless he thought I owed him something. Technically, he _had _saved my life – perhaps I did owe him something. Something more than gratitude. … It was not inconceivable that _he_ would think so.

...And yet, something I had kept willingly and well-suppressed inside me was forcing its way into my consciousness – that I had _always_ known that he knew who I was. That from the very moment I first saw his shocked, incandescently angry eyes, there had really been no doubt about it.

Why had I been so determinedly blind? Was it simply fear – a sort-of false device of self-preservation? That if he didn't know me, he couldn't really wish to hurt me?

Probably. Yes, in fact. From the very first, he had made me afraid of him – threatened me physically, insulted me verbally. Of course I had wanted to detach myself from owning and personalizing such hatred and contempt. I had wanted it to be _his _character, _his _flaw, _his _fault. I hadn't wanted it to be about _me_.

_Alright, then let's say he knows me. Now what?_ I wondered. What did he have in store for me? Why keep me here? Was I here to serve a purpose – solve a problem? - settle a debt? Perhaps he had plans for a ransom – perhaps he had been negotiating with my family and friends all this time. …My family... perhaps it was an old family feud? He seemed old enough to be my father – maybe he knew my parents? Or I knew his children? Perhaps we were "Two houses, both alike in dignity" -?

Were we lovers who fought? Friends who betrayed? Enemies at war? What happened?

...

_So, I'm a prisoner,_ I thought.

I tried to understand what that actually meant. How did a prisoner act? How was_ I_ supposed to act? Had he always treated me like a prisoner – and I, subconsciously, had always acted like one? – I supposed I had, in a way. I hadn't really had much choice in the matter. Did the fact it was openly acknowledged really change anything?

What was the etiquette? What was the accepted form of interaction between captor and captive? Hopefully he wouldn't get any worse. He was already unpleasant enough as it was, with his mocking jibes, his rules, his threats, his sporadic violence. The last thing I wanted was for "consequences" to become "punishments."

I thought about the traditional forms of punishment for "prisoners". Beatings, torture, starvation, rape... Were such things what I now had to look forward to? Was that what had happened to the wailing lady? Was I going to end up locked in the same room as her, wailing my wrongs to the unheeding walls?

Or maybe he was planning to turn me into his slave – make me call him "Master", crawl on my knees, kiss the hem of his robe, kowtow to him... Well, _that_ was _never _going to happen. His power over me – his physical advantage, as well as his compelling magnetism – did not, and never would, extend to my subjugation. He might be able to bully me and manipulate me, but he wasn't going to degrade me. That much I new for certain.

_Well, what's the worst he really can do?_ I thought. _Make me dig my own grave?_

…

Escape.

I had already tried and failed. But that didn't mean I couldn't try again. I could tie my sheets together and escape out the window, captive-princess style. Or I could find something heavy to bash Lucius over the head with, and make a run for it. My hasty, fool-hardy recent attempt had been doomed to failure, I could see that clearly now. Perhaps I had wanted it to fail. Perhaps I had been merely trying to force some kind of crisis on my stagnant situation... and if so, it had worked. Albeit against me.

But now – now _I_ knew that _he_ knew who I was – I wasn't sure if I _wanted _to escape, any more.

If I ran, I could lose the answers I was so sure he had. If I ran, I might end up in eternal blankness.

But if I stayed...

...The danger lay in my frighteningly snowballing feelings for him. It was like his power had somehow wrapped its tendrils around me, at first silently entwining, and now rapidly pulling me into a place of complete, inextricable helplessness. I was falling for him. – Not falling in _love_ – that wasn't the right word. _Love_ couldn't be this – this _fixation_, this _craving _that I was experiencing, that I could no more understand than I could deny... This was more like – like hunger-pangs of an oncoming starvation... and he was the only form of sustenance available to me. Poisoned, but irresistible.

No, I wasn't falling in love... I was falling under his spell.

_I'm a fool,_ I thought.

I was clinging to him because he was all I had, he was the only thing that was real at the moment. The lighthouse in the dark. The beacon in the fog. Because if I didn't, perhaps I would never find my way out again. And yet I knew I was in danger of being dazzled by that very same light. That I could wreck myself on the rocks surrounding him.

_What is the greater risk?_ I wondered.

Stay, and risk being blinded by the light?

Escape, and risk forever belonging to the fog?

* * *

_…_

Actually, my fears of slavery and subjetion came to nothing.

Things went on pretty much as before. We still sat together when I ate. We still exchanged less-than-pleasant pleasantries.

The most obvious difference was that Lucius stopped staring at me. Not that he particularly avoided eye contact, or deliberately looked elsewhere. He just didn't spend the whole time with his eyes glued to my face any longer. I suppose I ought to have viewed it as a victory, but it was rather a hollow one, for in some ways I felt I lost more than I gained. I'd been so successful in making myself irritating to him, that – as my feelings for him grew – it had become something of a subversive way to secure his full attention. I hadn't realized, until it stopped, just how much I had begun to bask in it.

_God, has it come to this?_ I thought._ I actually miss his perpetual sneer?_

Worse than realizing that my pride was failing me – my courage appeared to be doing so, too.

I couldn't bring myself to demand the answers I was so sure he had. I couldn't bring myself to form the questions I so desperately wanted to ask. They stuck in my throat, dry lumps I could neither spit out nor swallow away, gradually constricting my vocal chords so I could hardly speak for congestion...

I hated this new reticence, and could hardly understand it...

It wasn't fear of his anger, for his fits and starts of violence no longer held much terror for me, beyond a certain vague apprehension of pain. Pain I could cope with. Bruises faded, wounds healed, and his brutality was never premeditated, protracted or deliberately cruel.

No, it was something quite different to fear of physical pain, which held me back...

His hatred. That was it. While I didn't mind inciting his anger or contempt, I was absolutely loth to incite his hatred. I didn't want him to detest me any more. Seeing his eyes glint with that unfathomably hard expression made me almost ill with anxiety. And I knew that to broach the subject of... _me_... would be to throw petrol onto that ever-low-burning flame of his hatred, when all I wanted to do was to stamp it out, extinguish it altogether.

And so, coward that I was proving to be, I persuaded myself that I ought to wait. That it was the sensible, _rational_ thing to do. That first I had to break through his shell – which I knew had been weakened by his physical reaction to me against the wall in my bedroom – and then, only then would it be safe to pursue the secrets of my enshrouded past.

Because of all the limited alternatives presented to me, choosing to suspend in limbo seemed the most preferable course of action – or rather, non-action – to take.

And so, with my willful complacence, we went on much as we had before.

* * *

…

I started to spend many hours in the library.

For some reason, my room was beginning to feel too much like a cell. And despite the fact the books were ninety-five-percent blank to me (I was still fairly convinced they were written in some kind of invisible ink), I felt comforted just being surrounded by them. Like I had a natural affinity with them.

Not liking to sit at the imposingly grand desk, I brought some of the pillows from my room down and created a kind of nest for myself in one corner, and there I would curl up and read for hours on end. Though the pickings were slim, the nuggets were rich and beautiful, and did not lose their sheen with repeat viewing... but I just couldn't be content with them, when I knew – I could _see_ – how vast and great a treasure lay all around me, in plain sight, yet just beyond my grasp.

I longed to "investigate" the secret of their silence.

But with my failure to accost Lucius about my identity, I had lost confidence in myself, in my ability to act against his inclination. And although I had his permission to use the library, I had more than a hunch he would not approve of the course of action I had in mind...

Yet as the days passed, and the man did not make a habit of suddenly appearing (as I feared he would) to check up on me, I began to think I might be able to proceed unobserved an unmolested. After all, surely what he didn't know couldn't hurt _me - _could it?

And one afternoon, without premeditation or preparation, I simply decided to go for it.

I picked out two "blank" books – the smaller of these I wedged under the door, as a kind of make-shift lock – the larger tome I took to the desk and lay it carefully down. First I inspected the cover. It was handsomely bound in dark green leather, embossed at the edges with intricate silver scroll-work. But where there ought to be the title and author, there was an uninterrupted expanse of green. I tilted it towards the light of the over-head chandelier, trying to detect an imprint of lettering, or the texture of dried ink – anything. But I perceived nothing.

It creaked slightly as I opened it to the first page. It was also blank. I thumbed through the first few pages. All blank.

_Right_, I thought. _Here goes._

Holding it firmly with my left hand, I used my right to slowly, carefully tear away a page from the spine. The sound seemed horribly amplified to my anxious ears, and I kept halting to peer over at the door, half-expecting an enraged Lucius to slam it open at any moment. The book that was wedged underneath suddenly seemed ridiculously inadequate, serving as nothing more than a blaring testimony to my guilt.

But the page came away at last – the door remained firmly shut – and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Again I held it up to the light, peering at it closely. Again I found nothing.

_Light – no. ...__Moisture?_

Rather self-consciously I spat a small blob onto the paper, and smeared it across with my finger. Nothing.

_Light – no. Moisture – no. ...__Friction?_

I rubbed the page between my palms, then against the sleeves of my silk bathrobe. Finally I folded it in half and rubbed the paper against itself – but with no effect.

_Friction – no. ...__Heat?_

The paraffin wall-lamps were too high to reach from the floor, so I dragged the heavy desk-chair over to the nearest one and clambered up. I pressed the paper against the glass casing, then held it over the open top, but the paper merely glowed opaquely, and there was no sign of oxidization.

_Heat – no. ...__Smoke?_

I tore off a small corner of the paper and dropped it onto the naked flame. It flared for a moment, then a spiral of smoke curled upwards, and I held the page above it like an umbrella. The paper discoloured slightly, but again, no hidden markings were revealed.

Sighing, I climbed back off the chair and dragged it back to the desk. I re-filed both books and went back to my nook.

I held the paper in both hands, gazing at it. I could only suppose the invisible ink could required some kind of special ultraviolet light or developing solution to be seen..._I wish you would reveal your mysteries to me, _I thought. _I wish I knew – not only WHAT you hide, but WHY you have been hidden. I wish I knew... I wish I knew..._

And as I stared at it, in a kind-of day dream, I was sure I saw the page flicker over with a spindly writing, silvery and fine, like spider's gossamer.

I blinked – gasped – focused – and it was gone.

After an hour of avid staring and squinting, the page remained stubbornly blank, and I gave up at last.

As usual, my mind was playing tricks on me.


	9. Pain

_**Well... lovelies,** thanks so much for your feedback! __Now, as much as I love keeping you guessing about everything, there is one thing I would like to clarify. This story is strictly vampire-free. Lucius is not and never will be a vampire. To quote from The Princess Bride, "I would as soon destroy a stained-glass window" as make Lucius a vampire. I hope that puts your fears to rest. _

_As for the coming chapter... I really hope you like it, and pretty-pretty-please leave a review, because I'm dying to know how you'll react to certain elements in this chapter (you'll know what I mean when you behold them). I reply to all registered users, and send loving vibes to all guests. __Oh yeah, and **warning**, this chapter contains a leetle bit of** torture**! Uh-oh!_

_PS JKR pwns the world! _

* * *

_..._

She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. - Not that I could _remember_ any other woman, but I didn't need a database of comparisons to know for certain that she would surpass them all.

I came down to dinner one evening, and there she was, seated with Lucius at the mahogany table.

Luminescent, almost translucently pale skin, delicately flushed like a pale rose. Lustrous, abundant hair, piled high in a glossy coronet. Full, red mouth, and features so fine they looked like the idealized imaginings of a Renaissance master-sculptor. She was young – or rather, ageless – almost _shimmering_ with health, and brimming with a kind of poised, taut vitality. There was a tangible intensity and force about her, especially manifested in her arresting almond-shaped eyes, which scintillated like black sapphires in the light of the chandeliers.

She was dressed in what could only be described as a ballgown: floor-length, full-skirted, the bodice tightly fitted and glittering with jewels, the colour of midnight: somewhere between inky blue and black. Such a dress would make any woman striking – on her, it was breath-taking.

I was so utterly confounded that I began to back straight out again, but Lucius softly commanded, "Come, mudblood – come in."

And, in a trance, in a daze, I drifted over towards them, so astonished that I hardly registered his derogatory term of address, which would usually have me up in arms.

I was struck immediately by three things. – Firstly, the lovely woman was sitting in _my_ place. – Secondly, the pair were dining together: both places were set, both plates were filled. – Thirdly, there was no place set for me.

Lucius beckoned me to him, and my breath caught as I realized how... different he looked. His silken hair was drawn back and tied at the nape in a curiously formal way. Although his clothes were always immaculate and expensive, I could see his present attire was of an even more luxurious "evening" variety - albeit an evening belonging to some century long past. He was as resplendently handsome as she was devastatingly beautiful.

Once I would have thought their elaborate, antiquated costumes bizarre. Now all I saw was _them_. Perfect, harmonious _equals_.

When I reached Lucius's chair he placed a hand on my side and turned me to face his mysterious companion.

Addressing her, not me, he murmured, "Allow me to introduce you to Alice. Alice – ah, Carroll. She is a _guest_ of mine for the time being." He did not supply _her_ name to me.

I don't know what I expected – that she would offer some kind of greeting? At least make a basic acknowledgement of my sentience? – But she did neither. The woman's dark eyes travelled slowly over me, over my whole body, taking in my gauzy, thin bathrobe, lingering on my bare feet, my tangled locks, my unmade-up face.

I felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair. To be confronted and scrutinized by two such exquisite examples of masculine and feminine grace, in all their rich finery and elegance, was a mortification I was ill-equipped to bear.

Suddenly, the woman's eyes flicked up to meet my own, and in that split-second my blood turned to ice. The same horrible, nightmarish feeling swooped over me, that I had experienced when the portrait in the hallway had hissed at me, or when I heard the wailing behind the third-floor door. It was something like knowing real terror. Hair-raising, bone-chilling terror.

My legs start to wobble, and I felt Lucius's hand grip me a little tighter, steadying me.

Then her gaze left my face, and immediately the terrifying feeling subsided. Perplexed and confused, I wondered what the matter was with me. She wasn't frightening. She was beautiful. Too, too beautiful.

The woman turned to Lucius, and a gradual, sultry smile curled her ruby lips. "Charming," she said. "Most... befitting."

Lucius made a slight nod of agreement.

"Alice, my dear, go and sit over there." His voice was supremely dismissive as he pointed to a place near the fire.

Like an automaton, I did as he bid.

I had been so unprepared for such a thing to happen: for the population of my world to be – so suddenly and without warning – just _doubled_ like that. It robbed me entirely of my self-possession, my very _sense_. I was completely blind-sided.

All I could think was, _how can anyone be so beautiful? They both are. They're both so beautiful._

And while the pair dined, my eyes went back and forth, back and forth, between the half-profile of the man and the quarter-profile of the woman. I just sat there staring and staring and staring. Everything around them had dissolved into soft-focus, and there was a muffled thudding in my ears, which I dully registered as my own heartbeat.

Gradually the haziness began to clear, and I found myself tuning into their conversation.

The woman was part-way through a question. "– notice it displaying any sign of its former... _precociousness_?"

Lucius chuckled urbanely. "None at all," he replied. "Although it appears to have an ingrained tendency to inquisitiveness, I grant you."

"I'm certain it does," rejoined the lady. "Such predilection may be observed in any monkey."

"Indeed. - Although a monkey has no delusions of grandeur, nor pretensions to greatness."

"And so the muggle slips inexorably down the rung, below its tree-dwelling cousin." She laughed prettily, then sighed. "How I've missed our tête-à-têtes, Lucius. ...This reminds me of happier days – long, long ago. Before everything... _happened_."

Although I could not understand the drift of their discussion, I felt a pang at hearing his name on her lips. It sounded so intimate and easy – not at all like my faltering, awkward attempts at addressing him. ..._Could that be his wife?_ I wondered, with a second pang. _He said he no longer has a wife. But they look so... compatible. Almost... inevitable._

Lucius took a sip of wine, and even at this distance I could see his eyes caressing and _complimenting_ the woman in such a way that they had never done when fixed on me. And, to my dismay and chagrin, I felt a lump forming in my throat, and hot tears prickling my eyes.

"Remember what fun we used to have?" she continued. "Oh, Lucius, I _do_ hope you have some lovely designs in store for it. You always had such a... _creative_ flair for amusing yourself – and your friends – with those pitiful creatures."

He smiled. "I was younger then."

"Does creativity dull with age?"

"No, it merely refines. I am not so easily gratified. My tastes tend to exploits more... subtle and prolonged."

Another tinkling laugh. "What luck that you find yourself in the position to indulge them, then."

"For that, I can only thank _you_."

"When the time comes, I doubt not that you will." She paused, then in a low voice she murmured, "You know I'm taking a great risk in coming here, Lucius."

He replied by taking her hand and brushing it briefly with his lips. I felt myself trembling. Those lips – to me, only ever the conveyors of countless cruel words – imparting something so gentle and reverential as a _kiss_?

...An intricately tangled knot of emotions twisted my stomach: a longing, born of what I both knew and _didn't_ know I had lost – an envy, born of the emptiness of my present alien existence – a hopeless desire, to be acknowledged, to be respected, to be esteemed, to _not_ be hated... How I craved to feel such things. How he had _made_ me crave such things...

Suddenly the woman's back straightened and she made a little noise of pleasure. "Oh! It's the Dragon Waltz! It was once a favourite of mine."

Only then did I realize that the sound of supple, dreamy piano music was gently rippling throughout the room. I was in such a daze I hadn't noticed it before.

With an amused, playful smile - such as I had not believed him capable - Lucius stood and held out his hand to her. "Shall we shun convention and have this dance?" he said. The woman sprang gracefully up to meet him, and in one impossibly elegant motion, he spun her into his arms.

_Get up and leave this room,_ I said to myself. _There's the door. Walk over to it, and leave them to it. You're not wanted here._

But I couldn't. I couldn't do it.

They danced beautifully, naturally. Although the space was not large, somehow the floor seemed to augment, the lights to dim, the volume of the music to increase... It was mesmerising. Enchanting. But then I couldn't see any more, because my foolish, foolish tears were now fully fledged and escaping down my cheeks.

The feminine laugh rang out again, but this time it was metallic and derisive. "Look, Lucius. There seems to be something the matter with it."

There was a pause, then I heard Lucius reply, "It makes a spectacle of itself with tiresome regularity."

_They can't be talking about me,_ I thought. _They just can't._ But it seemed that they could, and they were. When I dashed away the tears from my eyes they stood side by side, hand in hand, gazing down at me like I was some kind of circus sideshow freak.

"Maybe it wants to dance," the woman said. "Go on, Lucius, ask the little mudblood to dance. I want to see it try."

For a second I thought I saw Lucius's eyelids flicker warily, as if he were trying to calculate or interpret her motives. Then he stepped forward, grabbed my wrists and pulled me roughly up against him – and began to swing me around the floor, bathrobe, bare feet and all.

The humiliation was sickening. I could hear the woman giggling, and Lucius himself was smiling down at me in a hard, horrid way. His steps were lithe and assured, but deliberately complex and fast, and there was no way I could keep up with him. I stumbled clumsily about, totally unable to gain my centre of balance, dragged and tugged this way and that, feeling more like a rag doll than a real person. And I hated him for it.

"Let me go," I said through clenched teeth, my face burning. I tried to wrench myself out of his grip, but it seemed he expected this, for he held me very tightly, even bruisingly.

"No," he murmured. The light caught his eyes in such a way that for the first time I noticed his silver irises were sharply edged by a fine, slate-dark outer ring. "I enjoy dancing with you."

"Let me go this _instant_ or I'll – "

"You'll what, my dear?"

"I'll tell her everything," I hissed. "How you're keeping me here against my will. How I'm your _prisoner_."

"She will be most gratified to learn it, I assure you."

I blinked, suddenly unsure. _He must be bluffing,_ I thought. And, determined not to let my courage fail me _yet_ again, I stared straight into his eyes and loudly yelled out, "This man has kidnapped me and I ask that you notify the police immediately."

The burst of laughter from both of them was not really the reaction I'd hoped for. "I'm not j-joking!" I cried furiously, fuelled by shame and bitter rage. "He's a complete psycho _bastard_, and he really_ is_ keeping me here against my will!"

"But what an impertinent little puppet!" I heard the woman exclaim. "Hold it tight, Luci, – I'm going to –"

And she muttered a word which sounded Italian, or Latin – and then I was screaming uncontrollably, I think my body had been doused in petrol and set alight, or maybe someone was hacking at me with knives or sawing at me with ragged-toothed blades, or perhaps I was being boiled in oil, or torn by wolves, or gouged by razor-sharp claws –

And then it just stopped.

I fell against Lucius, all my muscles convulsing, retching helplessly, a cold sweat drenching my body. I was making strange whimpering noises, like a wounded dog.

"Oh, how disgusting, it seems to have wet itself."

Lucius made a quiet tsk-ing sound and let me fall to the floor.

_She's right,_ I realized, _I have wet myself_. But I was too faint and far-away to care, and I simply curled up, closed my eyes and just shivered and shivered.

I heard Lucius say, "You do not deem it unwise –?"

"Only obliviation needs to be avoided," the woman replied brightly. "Its memory is weakened to the last point before total irretrievability. Its body, however..."

And then I was writhing and shrieking again, it seemed I was being shredded and skinned alive, broken glass was being driven under my skin, iron nails rammed into my flesh, my bones were being smashed, crushed, crunched - and was that acid being poured into my eyes, down my throat? And fire – _fire_ again, consuming flames, blistering, scorching, _charring_ my body –

No human - no living thing - was meant to bear such pain, such agony.

My body simply shut itself down and delivered me to blissful blackness.

* * *

...

I drifted in and out of consciousness.

The hum of lively conversation seeped into my brain... then blackness... then the sound of convivial laughter... then blackness again...

Gradually the episodes of blackness subsided, and I regained full awareness. My body ached all over – like I was suffering the after-effects of a severe cramp, but in every single muscle of my entire body. I was terribly, terribly weak and my temples were pounding wretchedly.

I neither moved nor spoke, for fear of another – _another what_? I wondered. – Another seizure? Is that what had happened?

Through the throbbing in my head, I registered the chime of crystal glasses and the sound of low, amiable discourse, and I realized that the sophisticated two-person soirée continued, seemingly unhindered by my prostrate presence.

_Don't mind me,_ I thought bitterly. _I'll just stay here on the floor, half-dead, wracked with pain and soaked in my own pee – but do please continue enjoying yourselves..._

_ ...You're a fucking prick, Lucius. Letting me lie here like this._

I couldn't quite believe he was being so callous. I always knew he was a cold customer, and often a cruel one, but I hadn't credited him with this level of hardheartedness. It hadn't crossed his mind to take me to hospital, then – despite the fact I had suffered an obvious trauma? And it wasn't because the roads were impassable, because _she _had got here, hadn't she?

Something so terrible happened to me that I had literally passed-out with pain, but there he was, eating his dinner and playing the charming host, like it was the most natural thing in the world for an unconscious girl to be lying on his dining room floor. …Maybe it was. Maybe he made a habit of it. Maybe this was some sick, perverted sex-game he and that – that _woman _played, to get them in the mood. Was that it?

I winced, remembering the intolerably insulting way she had spoken – not _to _me, but _about _me – as if I were brain-dead, as if I didn't count as an actual, breathing, thinking person.

_Who the hell does she think she is – calling me "it" – like I'm a dog or something? _

_And who the hell are you, Lucius? __Who the fucking hell are YOU?_

I went through a list of suitable words to describe the man. _Pig, wanker, tosser, son-of-a-bitch, arsehole, bastard, bastard, bastard BASTARD._ And because their wasn't a noun to really do justice to how I felt about him, I began crying again – but silently, silently.

What had happened to my body? Where had that incredible, unendurable pain come from? It had seemed to have been something to do with the woman – she had told Lucius to hold me tight, that she was going to do something to me – and then – and then just _agony_.

What had she done? Did she have one of those taser-gun things, like the police carry around? Or was it a coincidence: my body had just decided to go berserk on me, right at that moment? Maybe my appendix burst, or I had a stroke or something. Could that be possible?

There was a scraping of chairs, and I quickly closed my eyes, although I was facing away from them anyway. I heard them remove from the room, there was a bustling in the hall – him helping her on with her coat, soft laughter, and the sound of the heavy entrance door opening and shutting.

With a groan of effort, I forced my protesting body off the cold, hard floor, and clutching the nearest chair, I dragged myself to my feet.

The bathrobe was stiff and chafing my legs. I looked down at the obvious wet patch and the silent tears of hurt turned into earnest sobs of shame. _"It makes a spectacle of itself with tiresome regularity."_ That's what he had said. And that's exactly what I had done.

I wanted to simply... disappear. The old adage about wishing the floor would swallow me up suddenly made perfect sense.

Well, no way was I waiting around for him to come back and humiliate me further.

Slowly, cringing with the pain of my stiff, seized-up muscles, I hobbled over to the door. I opened it a fraction and peered out into the hall. The coast was clear. I wondered if Lucius was seeing her to her car. Or perhaps they were spending the _night _somewhere, together.

_I hope they skid in the snow and crash,_ I thought. _I hope they die – well, maybe not die. But seriously maim their insufferable faces._

Despite the pain, I made a quick dash along the hall, up the stairs, and into my room, slamming the door shut with my body.

For a moment I just stood there, hunched forward, shocked almost to the point of incapacity.

Then I was blindly stumbling over to the mirror.

_Don't look,_ I pleaded with myself desperately. _You'll only regret it._

But of course I looked. And of course I regretted it.

Today's bathrobe had been a dove-grey hue, the worst colour for showing up wetness. There was no mistaking the large dark patch discolouring both front and back panels. My hair was a fright, somehow both frizzy and straggly, although I had taken care to tame it before I went down to dinner. As for my face – it was ashen, marred with ugly blotches from crying. There was an odd expression in my eyes... a kind of strained, frozen horror beneath the swollen, red lids...

I shuddered with self-disgust.

I thought about the woman, how she looked, dancing with Lucius – graceful and superb and so _right_. Then I thought how I must have looked to her, barely dressed and barefoot, staggering and tripping ridiculously – a jarring incongruous _joke_. And that was _before _I wet myself.

Sick to the heart with my mockery-of-a-reflection, I turned my back on it, and limped through to the ensuite.

As usual, the bath was full and hot. I clambered numbly in, bathrobe and all. I wanted to wash away the evidence of my shame. If only I could wash away the memory of it too, consign it to the darkness where the rest of my memories were locked so securely away.

I closed my eyes and let the hot water cradle me... gradually relaxing and unwinding my fraught, warped muscles...

But I couldn't relax or unwind my fraught, warped mind. I kept replaying everything, over and over: them dining – dancing together – insulting me – forcing me to dance like a circus animal – her scornful laughter – his cruel smile – then that pain, that pain, that earth-shattering _pain_...

_And you thought you weren't afraid of pain,_ I sneered at myself. _Turns out it's pretty high up on your rather-long list of "Things To Most Definitely Be Afraid Of." – Oh, and you might like to add "Incontinence" and "Utter Humiliation" to that list._

The worst thing about the pain was not knowing where it had come from. If it was something he had done to me, or she had done to me, or I had done to myself. Or if, for that matter, it was all in my brain. My damaged, unreliable, miserable brain.

I hauled myself up to stand. The sodden material of my bathrobe clung to my body like a second skin, and I peeled it off and balled it up. For a few moments I stared at it, a kind of burning rage and despair building up inside me – and, with a sudden explosive screech, I threw it savagely across the room, into the farthest corner.

Standing there, naked and dripping, stripped of the loathsome garment, I felt suddenly stronger. Freer.

I looked at the clean robe hanging on the towel-stand – a pretty lavender one, all ready and pressed and dry – and I experienced an intense wave of nausea. I hated it. What it represented. My helplessness. My incompleteness. My worthlessness.

"I'm not wearing you," I told it out loud. "I would rather die."

And suddenly my mind was made up. Damn Lucius. Damn his secrecy, damn his rules. And _double _damn his "consequences."

Never, never again was I going to wear another bathrobe as long as I lived. So, he was out gallivanting with his lady friend was he? – Well, good for him. Good for _them_.

I was _glad _he was out of the house. Out of the way.

I was going in search of _clothes_.

* * *

…

I decided to be methodical. To work to a plan. Starting from outside my own room, I would try each door I came to, going left and continuing around. If I didn't find anything on "my" level, I would go upstairs and do the same there, avoiding the wailing-woman's room and the two rooms on either side of it, just to be on the safe side. If I was still out of luck, I would go down to the first floor – although I was fairly sure the bedrooms would be located in the upper parts of the house.

Still intent on not wearing a bathrobe, I wound one of the large towels around me and tucked it firmly in place. Yes, if I met anyone – or any_thing_ – on my travels, I would be even less decently dressed than before – but at least it would be _my_ choice. _My_ decision. No-one else's.

None of the doors on the first half of the corridor would budge. I tried each handle, rattling and twisting them – I even tried shoving my shoulder against the wood, as if I had a hope of breaking the hinges with my inadequately narrow frame. But I was still too sore and weak to keep that up for very long, and I moved on to the opposite side of the hallway.

Like all the others, the next door I came to was shut – but it wasn't a lock that stopped me from opening it. There was a very strange... sensation, a kind of cushion of air, that actually prevented my hand from touching the door handle.

_What on earth?_ I wondered._ Is this even possible?_

I tried again, quickly dashing my hand out – but with the same result. I simply couldn't penetrate the invisible wall.

I stared at it for a while. Maybe it was some fancy, high-tech security system – a kind of "magnetic-field" - as they called them in science fiction books. Had such a thing actually been invented, then?

I had to get through. Without a shred of supporting evidence, and having always presumed it to be on the next floor up, I was suddenly and completely _convinced_ that this was the door to Lucius's bedroom.

_Open,_ I thought.

_Open Sesame._

_Just open, damn it. Open!_

On impulse I brought up my hands and tried pressing them palm-forward into the cushion of air. "Open," I whispered. My palms were tingling strangely, and I could feel the air stirring – indenting – almost _bending_...

I leaned in, closing my eyes. My hands were really hot now... burning rather than tingling... and I was certain they were slowly breaching whatever it was that was shielding the door.

_Open open open open open open open open open open open open open op –_

There was a brief whooshing sensation, and I suddenly collided with the oak panelling.

Gasping, I quickly went for the handle again. This time my hand grasped it, turned it – and the door clicked off its catch.

"Ha!" I said aloud, a rush of triumph coursing through me. Not such a sophisticated security system, after all.

_Well, Your Royal Majesty Number-One King Prick Lucius, you might have humiliated me and hurt me and made me your fool, but you haven't got the best of me just yet._

And I quietly slipped inside, closing the door gently behind me.


	10. Clothes

_**Hi peeps!** Sorry this update is a few days overdue! As you may have noticed, I've had a bit of a re-write on the previous two chapters, taking on board some of the concrit raised, reducing a lot of the stream-of-consciousness and toning down Angst!Hermione a little bit. (However, Badass!Lucius remains for now). I've also tweaked things to do with Hermione's developing "feelings" for Lucius. If you would like to re-read my updated chapter "Questions," I have her musing on the fact that she is not actually "falling in love" with him, but feels she is "falling under his spell". She likens herself to a starving person who cannot resist the only food available to her, even though she knows it is poisoned. More about that in this chapter too._

_Please continue to review. Of course I love unreserved compliments (who doesn't?) but I really don't mind criticism that is intelligently thought out and constructively meant. It can be very useful. Thanks to ALL who took the time to leave feedback, and special thanks to Storywriter831 and zeeksmom for their advice and unofficial-beta-ing. Some of your excellent suggestions will be implemented in upcoming chapters :)_

**_***PLEASE NOTE I've inserted a NEW scene at the end of Chapter 8 "Questions" pushing everything forward, so this chapter STARTS with a scene you may have already read – but it has also had a significant REWRITE, so I recommend reading it again!***_**

**_Thanks again, lovelies!_**

* * *

...

It _was_ his bedroom, I knew it instinctively and with complete conviction.

It smelt like him – that unmistakable, expensive, masculine scent he exuded.

A chamber fit for a prince. Velvet, brocade and silk. Ebony, mahogany and walnut. Ivory, crystal and silver.

Imposing, grand and uncompromising. Like him.

I was immediately struck by the absence of paintings on the walls. It seemed strange, considering the rest of the house was so crammed with them. I had at least expected some of Lucius himself – conceited narcissist that he was. Then again, there were numerous large mirrors to make up for any shortage of portraits – in fact I counted seven in my immediate line of sight. Clearly his self-love was in no danger of wasting away through neglect.

The bed was almost preposterously large – daunting, even. Like a fort. It was hard to imagine it as a place of repose, let alone one of tender intimacy. I seriously doubted any visitor to those plush sheets would have much say in what went on between them. ...Despite myself, my bitter fury with the man, I felt the colour rise to my cheeks, as certain images arose vividly to mind... I grimaced angrily at myself. This terrifying power he had over me... it had to stop...

"It is stopping," I said aloud. "Right now."

I took a deep, determined breath. _Right,_ I thought. _Clothes._

The whole time I'd been here, I couldn't ever remember Lucius wearing the same garment twice, and so it was hardly surprising that the wardrobes were many and large. Deliberately, I marched over to the nearest one and yanked open the door.

_Bingo!_ It was full of shirts. White, black, silver, green, burgundy. Mostly white though, and no two the same. Some outlandishly frilled, some intricately embroidered, all fashioned from the most luxurious of costly fabrics.

I took out one of a plainer design – a kind of long tunic – and quickly slipped it over my head, afraid my courage would fail me if I hesitated. It came down almost to my knees, and I pulled my towel off from underneath it and just _revelled_ in the lavishness – the _substantialness_ of the rich, heavy twill against my bare skin, after so long in flimsy silk.

It smelt very pleasantly and subtly of _him_, but I was _not_ going to let it unsettle me.

I turned to the next wardrobe. This one contained hanger after hanger of neatly pressed black trousers, and I selected a pair at random and stepped into them. They were absurdly big, like oversized clown pants, and I nearly giggled when I beheld myself in the mirror lining the open door. I rolled the cuffs up at the ankles, folded over the waist, and then executed a celebratory pirouette. It was just so _glorious_ to be wearing actual clothes again.

I felt a sudden surge of... _power_, knowing how recklessly insubordinate I was being, after his callous, careless treatment of me. Too long I had danced meekly along to his tune, and what had I got? Precisely zilch. Negative zilch, if you counted my gradually eroding confidence and self-esteem – slowly withering away under his continued contempt, insults and threats. Then add to that the humiliation and pain I had endured tonight... I was _glad_ he had left me lying there on the ground, wet through and barely conscious. It was the wake-up call I needed.

With an almost painful clarity I realized that the feelings I had developed for him – that he had _forced_ me to feel, by keeping me in isolation, confusion and fear – were as unsubstantial and demeaning as the silk robes he had me wear. Attractive, sensual, but really only serving to keep me in my place. Helpless. Tame. Which I suppose was what he had intended all along.

_He's like a spider_, I thought. Somehow he had woven me into a web of infatuation, wherein every attempt to struggle only bound it the tighter around me... but I wasn't going to entangle myself any more, while he sat back and waited for me to stop moving...

I could tear myself out of such a web. I _must _tear myself out.

My despairing rage was fast converting into a frenzy of rebellious glee. I wrenched open door after wardrobe door, pulling on garments as I went – socks, cashmere jersey, satin waistcoat, white evening scarf... Coming to the last, tallest wardrobe, my eyes widened at the impressive array of exquisitely tailored robes, capes and cloaks... I freed a heavy velvety cape and wrapped it around me.

It was very thick and warm, and suddenly I thought, _I could escape in this. Really escape. I could survive in the snow. I'm sure I could._

The thought brought me to an immediate standstill. I was panting a little, and my expression in the mirror was rather wild. I took a couple of steadying breaths and forced myself to calm down, to think...

I'd been over this a thousand times in my head – I had convinced myself that I wasn't going to run again, that the secret to my identity lay _here_, locked up by the man who had also locked _me_ up... But now I wondered... was it foolish to squander such an opportunity? My jailor away, warm clothes at my disposal? ...This could be my only chance...

I went over to the window and peered out into the darkness. I could see very little – just a dark world of inky shadows edged by slivers of moonlit snow. ...I could do it. I could run back across the moor to the forest, and then follow its edge until I came to a road, or a house, or...

_Do it. Just do it. Go on._

A curious kind of numbing adrenaline coursed through me, and before I knew what I was doing, I was already halfway across the room, headed towards the door through which I had come. But a few feet from the threshold I lurched to a stop. _Wait, wait, wait!_ I thought_. You found clothes, but what about clues? Clues about YOU?_

There were several items of furniture I hadn't even looked at yet... The large walnut dressing-table near the bed, the ancient, domed casket in the corner. The tall mahogany bureau next to the window. They all looked likely to contain things other than clothes. More _important_ than clothes.

I couldn't leave yet, not until I had at least _attempted_ an investigation.

I moved back over to the dressing table. Clearly Lucius had complete faith in his special security system, because it wasn't locked. I drew open the drawer directly under the highly-polished top and gasped aloud. It was absolutely brimming with glittering jewelery.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, remembering the seemingly-endless variety of sparkling cravat-pins, rings, cufflinks, and lapel-jewels I had seen the man wear. But I just hadn't been prepared for quite such a horde. It was like a treasure-trove belonging to an extremely fastidious pirate.

Trembling a little, I picked up a huge brooch in the shape of a snake's head, fashioned from emeralds and pearls. I had seen Lucius wear it once before, and it had suited him, it had looked... normal, befitting. Up close, I realized that it was almost hideous in its ostentation. The massive gems looked like they could feed a third-world nation. In a kind of awed daze, I pinned the brooch to the neckline of my tunic, trying to imagine the kind of wealth of arrogance, and arrogance of wealth that one would have to have, to be able to wear such a thing without compunction, as part of one's everyday attire. _That_ was the kind of man he was.

Sifting through the shimmering piles, I noticed the snake theme to be a recurring one. _How appropriate,_ I thought._ Hypnotic eyes, cold blood, sharp fangs, graceful, slippery, poisonous. Perfect._

I slid the drawer closed, and drew open the one directly below. This compartment was lined in cushioned silk, but rather than jewelery it contained an assortment of boxes – one of engraved silver, one of black leather, an ebony one with ivory inlay, and several smaller boxes covered in dark velvet.

I opened the velvet ones first. They all held watches – not the normal sort with straps, but the kind you would find in a museum, with long chains – pocket watches. They were beautiful – or handsome, rather – but I couldn't see anything relevant to what I searched for.

Next I turned my attention to the silver box, but it would not open, despite there being no obvious lock. I moved on to the black leather one. It was very long and narrow – but the quilted interior was empty. I wondered what it usually contained. A letter-opener? A slender dagger?

My hands hovered over the last box – the ebony one – but I hesitated to open it. For some reason I didn't really want to touch it, perhaps because the design of the ivory inlay reminded me of a human skeleton... _It's probably empty anyway,_ I told myself. _And you can't NOT look inside it_. Taking a breath, I quickly grasped the lid and snapped it open.

It was _not_ empty.

It was the necklace. _My_ necklace. The one Lucius had ripped off my neck on that first day – the small bird's skull.

But _that_ didn't hold my attention for long. Because folded over and tucked into the back of the box was what appeared to be a clipping from a newspaper. It was creased in such a way I could see only the caption and the top third of the photo. The caption read TRAGEDY AT AUROR TRAINING COLLEGE. The monochromatic photo showed a group of smiling young men and women – and, unless my eyes were deceiving me – and I seriously believed they must be – the photo was actually moving: the people were silently laughing and chatting with each other.

And one of them was _me_.

I blinked several times. Shaking and incredulous, I reached for the slip of paper, and began to draw it out from the drawer.

As I did, several things happened, in quick succession.

There was a loud cracking sound. The drawer slammed on my fingers. I howled in pain. Lucius was all over me.

* * *

...

"HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?"

Lucius grabbed my shoulders and thrust me over the dressing-table, shoving my face so hard down onto it's surface that my cheekbone made a nasty cracking sound as it collided with the glossy walnut top. It was painful, but nothing to the agony of my fingers crushed in the drawer. I wailed incoherently, unable to think for the pain. The first shattering impact had rendered me winded and nauseous, but now his impellent weight was forcing my own body against the drawer-jam, and I could both feel and hear my bones cracking and splintering – any more pressure and they would surely detach.

My wail rose in decibel and pitch to a piercing scream – but then he wrenched me backwards, releasing me from my snare and sending me sprawling onto the floor some feet away from him.

My fingers throbbed so excruciatingly that I shoved them in my mouth all at once, but Lucius was already striding over to me, and I was forced to scrabble away. My be-socked feet kept slipping on the highly polished oak flooring, and I only succeeded in propelling myself a couple of feet backwards before he was crouching over me and dragging me up by the front of my – _his_ – clothes. "Tell me how you got in," he snarled, his knuckles pressing bruisingly into my chest where he grasped the bunched material in his fists.

But I couldn't form a reply: the world was on spin-cycle, my fingers were on fire, and my head lolled back like a broken-necked bird's.

I heard him growl with anger; he slapped my face sharply, but not hard – although it hurt my bruised cheekbone. "Answer my question, mudblood," he rasped, with a second stinging smack.

"What question?" I mumbled. _My fingers, my fingers._ The pain was so overwhelming I wasn't quite sure how I was going to deal with it.

"How did you enter _this room_?"

I frowned blearily, trying to filter his words through the blanketing pain. "Through the – door." _My fingers. God help me._

For a moment he looked like he would like to strike me in earnest, but he restrained himself, and through clenched teeth he said, "Yes, through the door. Of course, _through_ the door. How did you _open_ the door?"

I tried to remember. It seemed like something I'd done years ago, not within the last hour or so.

But then I forgot to answer the question, because – because – my fingers again. _My fingers, my fingers..._ I brought them up in front of my eyes and cried out with horror, and my whole body began to quake violently. They didn't look like fingers at all, they looked like squashed caterpillars – purple and black, bloody, mashed, flat, broken. Some nails were missing, several others were split and hanging by threads of skin.

"Help me," I choked out, staring up at Lucius, just trying to somehow _reach_ him through the haze of agony. "The pain. – I can't. – Please."

His expression was impassive, and I thought, _he's not going to help me. He hates me, remember?_ But then he half-turned away, murmuring something I couldn't hear, and moments later he was pulling me up into the crook of his arm and holding a small vial to my lips. "Drink," he commanded softly.

I would have drunk poison at that point, if it were guaranteed to numb my fingers. Obediently I opened my mouth and let him tip the liquid in – it was very bitter, and made my tongue and throat prickle – but then wonderfully, miraculously, the pain began to subside until it had simply disappeared... and I could see, could breathe, could _think_ again.

"Thank you," I whispered, relaxing, almost _nestling_ against him – willing, in my euphoric relief, to dismiss from my mind the fact that _he_ was the cause of my pain in the first place.

I wasn't allowed to get too comfortable though. Lucius stood up quickly, tipping me unceremoniously back on to the floor. "Clearly it's the only way I'm going to get a word of sense out of you," he drawled, moving back to the dressing table.

_Oh, that's right,_ I thought. _You're a bastard who doesn't give a shit about me. Thanks for reminding me._

I clambered shakily to my feet, and watched him sliding the drawer smoothly back to click into place. I met his gaze in the reflection of the mirror above it. "You may answer my question now, Alice," he said. "How did you enter this room?"

I couldn't quite make out if he were still angry... his voice was calm, but those eyes... I licked my lips drily. It felt so strange to be at one moment in utter agony, the next to be quite pain-free. It was disorienting: that disjointed feeling day-time-movie-goers have when they stumble out into the sunlight. _Concentrate, Alice._ "Um – I pressed my hands against that air... air-shield," I told him truthfully, for I could see no real reason to lie. "And it just disappeared."

He turned to face me, and I noticed that his face was quite pale. "The door?"

"The air. It disappeared and then I opened the door, in the usual way."

He was watching me intently, piercingly, though not with his customary sneer. "And why, may I ask, did you – for the second time, and against my _explicit_ warning – decide to breach the conditions of your... stay?"

If I needed a reminder that I had much greater cause to be angry with him, than he with me – then that last word did the trick.

"My _stay_?" The expulsion of that enormous pain had left a great space within me, which was quickly filling up with a deluge of fury. "As in, my enjoyable little visit here? My pleasant sojourn amongst kind and cherished _friends_? – Come on, Lucius, let' s call a spade a spade. _My custody! My imprisonment!"_

With his hair drawn back Lucius's features seemed sharper, even more severe than usual, and I quailed a little under his icy stare, half expecting him to lash out at me again. But he merely pursed his lips and said, "Call it what you will, it does not change the fact that you deliberately disobeyed me – again."

I glanced down at my hands – blissfully numb, but still horribly misshapen and broken – and my rage swelled, then solidified.

"Of course I did!" I spat, anger absolutely trumping fear. "You _forced_ me to, didn't you? I've been sitting back all this time like a perfect idiot, just _waiting_ for you to throw me the tiniest _scrap_ of information about who the hell I am, and what the hell I'm doing here – and you've given me nothing. _Nothing_. The only thing I have from you are _these_!" – I held up my poor, mangled hands, – "AND A ROYAL PAIN IN MY ARSE."

I don't know why I added that last bit, for I knew it would incense him – except that I wanted to hurl all my frustration and hurt and infuriation at him before my bottle failed me, or he inevitably put a physical stop to it.

Lucius's eyes narrowed, glittering dangerously. "You risk much speaking that way to me," he said hoarsely.

"Oh, go on, threaten me some more, you _bully_!" I snarled at him, riled beyond caring. "What do I have to _lose_ by breaking your idiotic rules, Lucius? Nothing. I have _nothing_ to lose, and _everything_ to gain. I _know_ that you know who I am – there's a picture of me in that drawer you mashed my hands up in!" He was no longer pale, but lividly white – a sure sign of violence to follow – but I plunged recklessly on: "But since you're too much of a coward – or maybe just an _arsehole_ – to tell me anything, then _obviously_ I'm going to have to find it out for myself –"

"Be silent!" he hissed warningly.

"I WON'T!" I had finally found my tongue after so long: the floodgates had opened, and nothing was going to stop me now – not the look on his face – not the fact that he was advancing threateningly towards me, or that I was having to dance speedily out of reach. The words tumbled out in an unstoppable torrent: "At the very least you could have the _decency_ to tell me what I did to you that was _so terrible_ that you treat me like THIS – Yes, and while we're on the subject, you might like to _enlighten_ me as to what it was that _evil cow_ did to me in the dining room this evening –"

"I warn you, mudblood –"

"Deserved that too, did I? Gosh, I must really have messed _both_ your lives up at some point –"

"You _will_ be silent –"

"– to make you want to hurt me that badly, – to – to behave so – so _viciously_ to me – like – like vicious _animals_ –"

"You will _not_ continue–"

"– not to mention whatever you've done to that poor lady you've got locked away upstairs –"

"SILENCE!"

"I suppose _one_ of them must be your wife, though I wouldn't presume to venture _which_ –"

He lunged forward and struck me hard. I staggered back a few steps, slipping and nearly toppling over. Twisting awkwardly, I managed to maintain my balance, and I straightened up, cradling my cheek, glaring at my assailant. "Why don't I just stick my hands back in that drawer and you can have another go, you pig?" I said, in a voice low and shaking.

"Do not tempt me," Lucius replied testily. He was breathing hard and a strand of his long hair had come loose from its binding.

He took a steadying breath, deliberately composing himself. He tucked the loose strand carefully behind his ear, then adjusted the wrists of his shirt, straightening them beneath the wide cuffs of his black jacquard tailcoat. When he finally looked at me again, he appeared quite calm. "Now..." His voice was smooth and light, as if we had been engaging in no more than a polite chat. "...You will take off every single item of clothing belonging to me."

I felt a surge of fear, but I held his eyes determinedly, defiantly. "No."

A thorny smile touched his mouth, in such a way that I knew he sensed a crack in my courage. "But yes, my dear. Come, Alice. Either you will execute the task yourself, or I will do it for you. And please believe I will not take kindly to being forced to perform such a chore. "

I _did_ believe him. But I sure as hell was not about to back down now. "What's _wrong_ with you?" I spat.

He took a step towards me. "Oh, there's nothing wrong with _me_, my dear. – You may begin with the broach."

"Why don't you just tell me _why_ you hate me so much?"

Another step and he was close enough to touch me – though he didn't. He leaned in and murmured, "The broach, Alice."

I held up my ruined, useless hands. "I _can't_, Lucius. You broke my fingers, remember?" In an elaborately polite voice I continued: "You _do_ remember, don't you? It was about th-three minutes ago – we were standing over by that dresser – I say "standing" but of course what I _actually_ mean –"

"Would you like another slap, mudblood?" Lucius cut in roughly.

"Oh, yes _please_," I returned sarcastically. "But only if hitting a _girl _makes you feel all big and powerful."

We stood, eyes interlocked and sparking with reciprocal rage – not touching, and yet somehow clashing, gnashing, colliding.

A strange look flickered over Lucius's features, similar to his expression after our altercation against my bedroom wall... a kind of abrasive, resentful desire... so thoroughly interlaced with abhorrence and loathing as to be more offensive than complimentary.

My breath caught, as I sensed a dangerous new dynamic in the air... But then he dropped his gaze, and, stooping over me, he began to unpin the heavy jewel from the neckline of my shirt. He was gentle – unexpectedly so. As he released the catch his fingers brushed my bare skin, it seemed _caressingly_, sending goosebumps all over my body.

I stood absolutely still, cursing my surging blood, my racing pulse. As usual, his near proximity was playing havoc with my senses, and despite my solemn resolution to extract myself from his shimmering net of power, I simply could not control my body's almost _chemical_ reaction to his physical presence, to the electrifying charge he radiated...

After his heavy-handed brutality, his suddenly-soft touch had a lulling, almost tranquilizing effect.

"Please, Lucius," I whispered, my face mere inches from his. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck. "Just tell me my name."


End file.

Harry Potter, Angst, Suspense